Eastman Johnson: 6 works

'Eastman Johnson was one of America's most sophisticated painters of everyday life. In the years around the Civil War, African-American life became one of Johnson's favorite subjects, and the Chrysler's painting is one of his most famous works in this vein.'

'In the 1840s Eastman Johnson studied in Düsseldorf, Germany, with Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. Johnson also studied the work of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish masters in The Hague before ending his European travels in Paris, studying with the academic painter Thomas Couture in 1855.'

'In contrast to Johnson's depiction of Southern slavery in "Negro Life at the South" (1859), "Sugaring Off" celebrates Northern "Yankee" values of free labor, communal work, and social equality.'

'Painted immediately after the Civil War, Eastman Johnson's Fiddling His Way explores the new freedoms and economic challenges facing emancipated African Americans.'

'During the Civil War he traveled with the Union army, and he based this painting on an incident he witnessed at the Battle of Antietam in 1862.'

'He is best known for his genre scenes and portraits. This charcoal study dates from the same year that he completed one of his best known paintings "A Ride for Liberty - The Fugitive Slaves," which depicts a slave family riding to freedom.'