Currently not on view
White and Yellow Oak,
1883
David Johnson, American, 1827–1908
x1990-52
Johnson belonged to a group of American landscape painters working in a style influenced by French realists (Corot, Millet, and others), whose paintings had become popular with American collectors after the Civil War. Combining luminous effects of light and atmosphere with a precise observation of the details of nature, these painters eschewed the romantic vistas of the American wilderness favored by the Hudson River School to find beauty in mundane scenes and local motifs. This drawing of a stand of ancient oaks was undoubtedly intended as a finished work of art, and it is one of a number of similar meticulously drawn studies of specific types of trees Johnson produced later in his career.
Information
Title
White and Yellow Oak
Dates
1883
Maker
Medium
Graphite and white chalk
Dimensions
30.5 x 45.7 cm. (12 x 18 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953
Object Number
x1990-52
Signatures
Signed and dated with monogram in graphite, lower right below inscription: DJ. Augt. 1883
Inscription
in graphite, lower right above signature: White & Yellow Oak. [in artist’s hand]
in graphite, lower right following date: No. 13 [in unknown hand]
Culture
Period
Type
Materials
Subject
Max Safron, New York; E. Maurice Bloch, Los Angeles; his estate sale, Christie's, New York, June 19, 1990, lot 67.
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1990," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 50, no. 1 (1991): p. 16-69., p. 56
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 212, cat. no. 53; p. 213 (illus.); p. 340, checklist no. 861
