Negro Life at the South is considered Johnson's masterpiece, and many elements have implications and have been interpreted at length. Although this painting was popularly known as Old Kentucky Home nearly from the beginning, it depicts a scene from Washington, D.C. The painting is a domestic scene behind a dilapidated house. On the left in the foreground is a couple courting, in the middle there is a banjo player playing while an adult woman dances with a child as others look on. At the right edge, a young white woman in an elegant white dress is gingerly stepping in to a social world that may not be her own. An adult black woman looks out an upstairs window as she steadies a small mulatto child sitting on the partially collapsed roof. The darkest skin belongs to the woman dancing with the child in the middle foreground. This skin color variation may simply be realistic, but it also invites the viewer to contemplate the mixed racial heritage of those portrayed. Several elements hint at or symbolize relations to an unseen wealthier white father -- the mulatto children, the ladder from the Negro quarters up to a larger house next door, and symbolically the rooster high in the tree near the taller house and hen on the Negroes' house roof. Both proponents and detractors of slavery would sometimes see this painting as supporting their world views, because the Negroes seem cheerful enough but their house was dilapidated.
 |
| Negro Life at the South |
 |
| Ethel Eastman Johnson Conkling, Painted by her father |
On his death in 1906 in New York, Eastman Johnson was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
 |
| Johnson's Gravestone |
His gravestone describes him simply as “ARTIST” and states “HIS WORKS ARE HIS MONUMENT.”
No comments:
Post a Comment