Children Playing Soldiers (Fourth of July)
Artist
David Claypoole Johnston
(American, 1799 - 1865)
Dateca. 1829
MediumWatercolor and gouache on paper
Dimensions10 1/8 x 13 3/8 in.
ClassificationsWatercolor
Credit LineCharles F. Smith Fund
Terms
Object number1977.22
Description"Children Playing Soldiers" is a humorous portrayal of two boys dressed up in makeshift battle regalia, pretending to go off to war. The boy at left wears the plumed folded-newspaper cockade of a militia officer. His large gold epaulet dangles in front of his shoulder; his oversize hat sits on his head at a precarious angle, almost blocking his vision. Riding a broomstick horse and brandishing a toy sword, he eagerly gallops after his companion, who holds an American flag and drags a toy cannon. He is dressed like a soldier from the French Revolution, with a red Phrygian cap and a leather ammunition bag. The red, white, and blue color scheme of their makeshift accoutrements emphasizes the patriotic nature of their play. On one hand, Johnston's watercolor may be seen as a lighthearted description of innocent childhood play, not unlike the many images of children, or more specifically of children playing grown-ups, that were common in American prints and paintings in the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, Johnston himself treated this subject, as indicated by his exhibited works with titles such as "Precocity", "Juvenile Artists", and "The Young Artist's First Attempt at a Full Length Portrait" (all whereabouts unknown). (1)
Yet on another level, "Children Playing Soldiers" recalls Johnston's many watercolors and prints that poke fun at America's peacetime military groups. The sword-waving, galloping pose of the boy rider, for instance, can be found in Johnston's 1825 lithograph of the ridiculously costumed and inept Colonel Pluck, an illiterate hostler who was elected colonel of the 84th Pennsylvania Militia. His most famous effort of this type is "Militia Muster" (1828, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.), a comic watercolor that satirizes a group of unprepared, highly undisciplined fighting men gathered for their required yearly training. A host of rough characters engage in various ineptitudes and follies, including drinking, brawling, and poking one another with their bayonets, while a dandified, cockaded militia officer tries to bring them to order. (2)
The boys in "Children Playing Soldiers" are clearly part of Johnston's works in this vein, yet they do not display the same buffoonery as their elders; instead they demonstrate the sense of playfulness and innocence that characterizes many nineteenth-century genre paintings of children at play. In fact, in many cases Johnston's adults behave more childishly than his children. In "Militia Muster", a small boy at the extreme left is virtually the only volunteer in line to exhibit a sense of seriousness and maturity of purpose.
Many of Johnston's watercolors are signed but not dated. He produced and exhibited works in this medium throughout his career, but many are known only today through exhibition records. "Children Playing Soldiers", which has been dated about 1840 by Johnston's granddaughter, could be the painting exhibited at the Boston Athanaeum in 1859 as "Calvary and Light Artillery of Young America," but it is impossible to know for certain. (3)
MAS
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Clarence S. Brigham, "David Claypoole Johnston: The American Cruikshank," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 50 (April 1940), pp. 98-110; Malcolm Johnson, David Claypoole Johnston, exhib. cat. (Boston and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1970); David Tatham, A Note about David Claypoole Johnston with a Check List of His Book Illustrations (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1970); David Tatham, "D. C. Johnston's Pictorialization of Vernacular Humor in Jacksonian America," in American Speech: 1600-Present, ed. Peter Benes (Boston: 1985), pp. 107-19; David Tatham, "David Claypoole Johnston's Militia Muster," American Art Journal 19, no. 2 (1987): 4-15.
Notes:
1. Works with these titles, usually watercolors, were exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum annuals in 1829, 1830, and 1840, respectively. See Perkins, Boston "Athenaeum Art Exhibition Index: 1827-1874" (Boston: The Library of the Boston Athenaeum, 1980), p. 86. For the young artist's first attempt "Precocity" see Kennedy Galleries, "American Drawings, Pastels and Watercolors: Part 2," exhib. cat. (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1968), nos. 13 and 12.
2. On Johnston's militia subjects, see Tatham, "David Claypoole Johnston's "Militia Muster." "Militia Muster" was shown at the Boston Athenaeum annual exhibition of 1829 and widely distributed in print format in several editions.
3. Johnston often exhibited a work several times, often years after it was executed.
On View
Not on view
