A Month's Darning

A Month's Darning

Enoch Wood Perry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In their subject matter and compositional format, Perry’s watercolor paintings are quite similar to his oils, and his method of applying paint was consistently characterized by fastidious attention to detail. Like his colleague Eastman Johnson, Perry studied in Düsseldorf and Paris, where he acquired a respect for careful draftsmanship. He exhibited “A Month’s Darning” in 1876 at the American Society of Painters in Water Colors and later the same year at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where it was acclaimed for its evocation of times past. The critic for the “New-York Tribune” found the woman’s head to be “the best part” of the composition and only regretted “that the sweet-faced girl . . . should have such large-footed men-folks to darn for.”

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.