Sunday Morning 1863

Eastman Johnson made this painting, Sunday Morning, with oil on canvas sometime in the mid-19th century. Johnson shows a man sitting on a stool holding a newspaper. We can assume that this man is a farmer because of the boots that he is wearing. Paintings like this can tell us a lot about social class and the development of a leisure culture in America. Notice the figure's relaxed pose and the way that he occupies this domestic interior. What does it mean to see a common farmer taking a rest and reading a newspaper? How does that change our assumptions about social class and work? Historians of art are attuned to the ways social and economic conditions shape our very understanding of art. Resources such as periodicals of the time, letters, and family records can shed light on what a painting like this might have meant in its own time, and how it has been reinterpreted since then.