Barnyard Scene, Sunset

Details

Descriptive Terms

paintings (visual works)
oil paint (paint)
canvas
Picture
Landscape
Landscape

Label

From "A Family Collects: Paintings and Sculpture from the Codman House," Concord Museum, 1993-1994: Thomas Hinckley is best known for bucolic scenes, most of which he painted near his home in Milton, Mass. This active barnyard scene depicts the farm in Dorchester, Mass., where the Codmans' grandparents, the Bradlees, and their family spent the summers in the mid nineteenth century. Hinckley's journal records that James Bowdoin Bradlee paid him $100 for this painting. In exhibit "Dairy to Doorstep: The Story of the New England Milkman" October 20, 2001 to March 3, 2002 at the Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington, MA.
"Artful Stories": When this was painted in 1848 the divisions that would ripen into the Civil War were smoldering in New England. Already violence had broken out between those who supported the status quo and those who fought for abolition. This painting can be seen as an antidote, an intentionally sanitized view of an agrarian world. There is no hint of the cow and sheep dung, or the flies, or the dirt that would surely be visible on the white apron of the maid a-milking. And no hint of the storm clouds we now know were on the horizon.
Conservation funds provided by Robert Bayard Severy in memory of his mother, Josephine McClintock Bellamy Severy (1914-2001)

Associated Person

Bradlee, James Bowdoin, 1813-1872

Associated Building

Subject Bradlee Farm,

Maker

Hinckley, Thomas Hewes, 1813-1896 (Artist)

Location of Origin

Dorchester, Massachusett, United States

Dimensions

30 5/8 x 39 x 3 (HxWxD) (inches)

Credit Line

Bequest of Dorothy S.F.M. Codman

Accession Number

1969.773

Places

Massachusetts (United States)