Christmas-Time, The Blodgett Family

Eastman Johnson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This conversation piece—a group portrait with narrative elements—was the first commissioned work of a type that Johnson would often paint. It shows William Tilden Blodgett (1823–1875), a supporter of the Union cause and a founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum, with his family in the Renaissance Revival parlor of their house at 27 West 25th Street. Depicted during the Civil War, at a time of urban upheaval, the serene interior decorated for Christmas, embodies "the best sentiment of home," as a critic observed in 1865. Only the toy of a caricatured black male dancer held by the young boy hints at pressing issues of racial strife and emancipation.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art