What's the Story?
The estate sale catalogue of 1907 described the figure as a young school girl on her way to recite a lesson. The hand clutching the books, however, wears a wedding ring. Even apart from this telling detail, the way she confronts the elements on a high cliff, like a figure on a ship's prow, suggest something much more momentous than a trip to school.
The title of the painting, The Girl I Left Behind Me, is taken from an old Irish song that was a popular regimental ballad in the Civil War. We know that Johnson followed the Union troops of General George McClellan in the early years of the war and he witnessed the battle of Manassas in 1862. When the war was over, he painted a picture based on his memories, showing a black family on a horse, racing for their freedom.
Perhaps The Girl I Left Behind Me also refers to the Civil War. Could those distant clouds be smoke from rifles and cannon, firing on the fields below? Is that far-off fence in fact a line of pickets?
Pictured: Eastman Johnson, The Girl I Left Behind Me,
1870-75; oil, 42 x 34 7/8 in. 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.
Part 2
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The Girl
I Left
Behind Me
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