The Girl I Left Behind Me (painting)
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| The Girl I left behind me |
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| Eastman Johnson , 1875 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 106.7 x 88.7 cm |
| Smithsonian American Art Museum |
The Girl I Left Behind Me (German The girl I left behind ) is an oil painting from 1875 by Eastman Johnson , on the one standing on a hill in the wind girl is depicted. According to Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC , it is one of the most expressive portraits in 19th century American art.
Image description
In the center of the picture stands a young woman in profile in a stormy landscape and looks out over the plain. She wears a dark, wind-blowing coat with a red coat lining that reaches over her knees, and high black shoes. With her hands in front of her chest she is holding two books and a dark brown hat that hangs in front of her stomach. The young girl is wearing a ring on her left hand, probably a wedding ring. The brown-red hair is blown away in the wind.
The background is a hilly landscape in which this scene is situated. The upper third is taken up by the gray-white sky, which merges into the gray plain on the horizon. Except for a pasture fence, no details can be seen there. The girl herself is standing on an elevated, sandy yellow path that turns into sparse ruderal vegetation towards the front right corner .
The signature of the artist E Johnson is located in the lower right corner on the way, which is cut off here.
background
The painting was created in 1875 and is named after an English folk song of the same name with the following text:
I seek for one as fair and gay,
But find none to remind me
How blest the hours pass'd away
With the girl I left behind me.
This song, the earliest publication of which dates back to 1791, became a popular ballad of the Army of the Northern States ( Yankees ) during the American Civil War , which was sung in a number of different variations and with different verses. Eastman Johnson was not a soldier in the war, but accompanied the Union forces under General McClellan and in 1862 he witnessed the Second Battle of the Bull Run near Manassas , Virginia . In several subsequent works he dealt with these experiences, in particular in the picture A Ride for Liberty - The Fugitive Slaves from 1862, on which a black family is depicted on the run to freedom. In the picture The Girl I left behind me , however, the link can only be seen through the title he has given, but Elizabeth Broun raises the question of whether the sky depicted in the background could not be darkened by the smoke and fumes of the cannons.
Provenance
Eastman Johnson did not sell the painting during his lifetime; accordingly, it was found on him after his death on April 5, 1906. In 1875 and 1876, however, he showed it in several exhibitions in Chicago, Brooklyn and Philadelphia. After Johnson's death it passed into the possession of the heirs and was sold to the Smithsonian American Art Museum by his wife Alexander Hamilton Rice after the death of Ralph Cross Johnson in 1907.
Web links
- ↑ Director's Choice ( Memento of the original from April 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
- ↑ according to Gaethgens 1988
- ↑ Director's Choice ( Memento of the original from May 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, p. 2
literature
- Thomas W. Gaethgens: Pictures from the New World. American painting of the 18th and 19th centuries, Prestel-Verlag, 1988, ISBN 3-7913-0879-3 , pp. 57–58.