Corn Husking at Nantucket

Eastman Johnson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This picture was probably Johnson’s final study for a large painting of 1876, now in the Art Institute of Chicago. As urbanization and industrialization increased in the late nineteenth century, both European and American painters celebrated preindustrial labor, often featuring indigenous crops in historically resonant regions. Johnson, for example, painted several series of works highlighting maple sugaring, cranberry picking, and corn husking in New England. Especially evident in this canvas is the residue of Johnson’s studies in France with Thomas Couture, who valued the freshness of the sketch, even in completed canvases.

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