Corn Husking at Nantucket

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.