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The Girl I Left Behind Me
Eastman Johnson (born Lovell, ME 1824-died New York City 1906)
ca. 1872
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 42 x 34 7/8 in. (106.7 x 88.7 cm.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible in part by Mrs. Alexander Hamilton Rice in memory of her husband and by Ralph Cross Johnson
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
A young girl stands on a promontory, her hair streaming in the wind. The path before her ends, so she must either retrace her steps or try to find a different way forward. Johnson called this painting The Girl I Left Behind Me, invoking an Irish ballad that was popular with both the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. In doing so, the artist opens the possibility that this young girl is doing more than waiting for the return of her husband. Her wedding ring, glinting in the light, speaks of commitment to her union, but is Johnson referring to her personal life or to the nation? The split-rail fence below her divides the landscape, and the fog surrounding her suggests a world fraught with ambivalence. She appears to wait for a sign of what will come next.
