The Old Stagecoach

Schoolchildren
Johnson recruited children to pose for the painting, which he painted in his studio, in Nantucket. The children were local to the Massachusetts island that sits thirty miles south of Cape Cod.

Lunch pails, schoolbooks
Because the lunch pails and schoolbooks lie abandoned in the grass, as if the children had tossed them aside after the school day, the scene pictured seems carefree and spontaneous. In fact, Johnson planned the composition—where every detail is placed—very carefully.

Red schoolhouse
The schoolhouse from which the children just escaped is visible through the thickets in the background on the right side of the painting.

Play
The happy-go-lucky children, exuberantly playing in the fields, tell us about this time period’s attitude toward childhood.

Prior to the 1800s, childhood was seen as an imperfect state that had to be tamed. At this point, however, children were thought to embody an ideal, innocent state that should be supported rather than controlled.

Girl with parasol
One girl holds a parasol, as if she’s a fancy lady taking a ride. The children imitate adult gestures and actions, imagining the stagecoach before its ruin.

African American girl
The African American girl, among the children pretending to be the horses of the stagecoach, clutches her throat where the rein has been tied.

Johnson, who had a history of exploring race and identity in his paintings, likely intended to call to mind post–Civil War lynchings and other brutal acts of racial discord during Reconstruction.

“Mayflower”
In naming the broken-down stagecoach “Mayflower” (after the ship on which English colonial settlers arrived in America), six years after the Civil War, Johnson commented on the decay of the nation’s original ideals.

But he had hope: he included children, who brought promise of reviving and renewing the country. This painting rejuvenated Johnson’s career, after a twelve-year hiatus.