The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 21, 2025

Winding Yarn (Interior of a Nantucket Kitchen)

1872

Eastman Johnson

(American, 1824–1906)
America
oil on board
Framed: 70.2 x 85.4 x 10.2 cm (27 5/8 x 33 5/8 x 4 in.); Unframed: 37.5 x 54.6 cm (14 3/4 x 21 1/2 in.)
Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection 1915.682
Location: 207 American Realism

Did You Know?

Eastman Johnson was a cofounder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Description

Set in a rustic kitchen on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, this painting depicts a woman who winds a ball of yarn from a coil looped in the hands of a man sitting across from her at a respectable distance. At the time, winding yarn was a common symbol of courtship that carried humorous overtones of a woman ensnaring her suitor. The second woman in the composition is likely a chaperone. The suitor’s unrefined, open-legged pose, coupled with his rude action of placing his hat on the floor, adds further comic elements that contemporary audiences would have appreciated.
  • H. B. Hurlbut, Cleveland (1878).
  • Strahan, Edward, ed. The Art Treasures of America: Being the Choicest Works of Art in the Public and Private Collections of North America. vol. 8. Philadelphia: Gebbie & Barrie, 1879. Mentioned: p. 74
    Cleveland Museum of Art. Catalogue of the Inaugural Exhibition June 6-September 20, 1916. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916. Mentioned: p. 128, no. 28
    Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Donald Jeffries Bear, and Janet Hite Lineberger. Painting Today and Yesterday in the United States. June Fifth [to] September First, 1941. Santa Barbara, Calif: [Pacific Coast Pub. Co.], 1941. Mentioned: no. 65
    Crosby, Everett Uberto. Eastman Johnson at Nantucket: His Paintings and Sketches of Nantucket People and Scenes. Nantucket, MA: 1944. Mentioned: p. 19, fig. C.51; Reproduced: p. 58, fig. C.51
    “A Check List. American Paintings and Water Colors of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Early Twentieth Centuries in the Cleveland Museum of Art.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 60, no. 1 (January 1973): 21–35. Mentioned: p. 30, cat. 116 www.jstor.org
    Turner, Evan H. Prologue in Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991. Mentioned: p. 14-15; Reproduced: p. 15
    Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993. Reproduced: p. 117
    National Museum of American History. Smithsonian's America: An Interactive Exhibition of American History and Culture. 1994; Salinas, CA: Creative Multimedia, 1994. Multimedia CD-ROM.
    Carbone, Teresa A., and Patricia Hills. Eastman Johnson: Painting America. New York: Brooklyn Museum of Art, in association with Rizzoli International Publications, 1999. Reproduced: p. 79, fig. 43; Mentioned: p. 79
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 535 archive.org
  • Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (June 6–September 8, 1991).
    Sesquicentennial Celebration. Miami University, Oxford, OH (May15–June 15, 1959).
    Art, A Means to World Understanding. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 16-April 10, 1949).
    Eastman Johnson at Nantucket. Kenneth Taylor Gallery, Nantucket, MA (July 1945).
    Painting Today and Yesterday in the United States. Santa Barbara, CA (June 5–September 1, 1941).
    Inaugural Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (June 6-September 20, 1916).
    Catalogue of Finished Pictures, Studies, and Drawings by the late Eastman Johnson, N.A.. American Art Association, New York, NY (February 26–27,1907).
  • {{cite web|title=Winding Yarn (Interior of a Nantucket Kitchen)|url=false|author=Eastman Johnson|year=1872|access-date=21 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1915.682