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Painting images of war, even as the consequences of the conflict are bearing out, is a difficult prospect for an artist to undertake. Yet, during the Civil War, hardly any artist was able to avoid representation or reference to the war as it invaded every aspect of life in America. With the American penchant for honesty in art as in all things and the 19th century Romantic trend of patriotism, Civil War era artists struggled to deal with the war in a way that would be appealing to a populace burdened with anxiety and loss. It is not surprising to find that some of the more successful artists turned to veiled symbolism and sentimental subjects in their work. One such artist, Eastman Johnson, found that through genre images of children and family life, he was able to depict the harsh realities of the war in a way that captivated American viewers.
Johnson was no stranger to broaching political commentary in his art. He is best known today for his images of African-American slaves, as in the painting, Negro Life in the South ( or Old Kentucky Home, 1859, Figure 1) in which his antislavery sentiments make a timely appearance on the eve of the Civil War. Although Negro Life in the South left Johnson's political stance ambiguous to many viewers, Johnson's other antislavery images, The Freedom Ring (1860) and The Ride for Liberty (or The Fugitive Slaves, 1862) depicted African Americans as courageous and deserving sympathy, leaving no question about the artist's position.1 Despite Johnson's pronounced political imagery, or perhaps because of it, the artist became a popular portraitist around Washington, even briefly granted a temporary studio inside the Capital building to do portraits of Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams. Yet Johnson favored genre painting, going so far as to produce many of his group portraits in arrangements of everyday life as conversation pieces.
Johnson received much of his training in Düsseldorf, where he studied from 1849-1851. His style was heavily influenced by the European art he was exposed to there as well as in Paris, where he briefly studied in the studio of Thomas Couture. The influence of the Dutch 17th century genre painting is clearly found in Johnson's subject matter and painting...