Christmas-Time, The Blodgett Family

Artist: Eastman Johnson (American, Lovell, Maine 1824–1906 New York)

Date: 1864

Culture: American

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 30 x 25in. (76.2 x 63.5cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Whitney Blodgett, 1983

Accession Number: 1983.486

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 763

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.

Signature: [at lower right]: E. Johnson. / 1864.

descended in the sitter's family

Essays
American Scenes of Everyday Life, 1840-1910
Nineteenth-Century American Drawings
Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880)

Timelines
The United States and Canada, 1800-1900 A.D.

Notable Acquisitions, 1983–1984
"Buying Pictures for New York: The Founding Purchase of 1871": Metropolitan Museum Journal, v. 39 (2004)

Department

The American Wing (17,857)

Artist / Maker / Culture

Eastman Johnson (16)

Object Type / Material

Canvas (4,846)

Oil (1,672)