David Johnson, N. A. (American, 1827-1908), "The Side Yard of the Wynkoop House, Marbletown, New York", oil on canvas, signed with initials and dated "[1858" lower left, inscribed (evidently by the artist) on original stretcher, "Occupied as a prison during the / sacking of Kingston by the British [in 1777", 11 in. x 16 in., in a fine period giltwood frame. E15000-25000 Provenance: Sotheby's, New York, September 26, 1990, Lot 5 (as "The Pink House, Kingston" [sic). Note: Johnson's convincingly detailed and veristic handling of this intimately observed rear view of a standard site endows its unremarkable subject with an artistic importance far beyond its scale. In choosing the ordinary, everyday aspect of an historic monument-that is, laundry day behind the Wynkoop House, southwest of Kingston-the artist concentrates not on a famous Dutch Colonial structure, but rather on the incisive character of early-morning light, as it reveals the imperfections as well as the beauties of the scene: its amiably incidental aspect of a little girl standing quietly amid suspended flour-sacks, bottles, baskets, and flower-pots, with makeshift steps, crooked water-barrel, a homely stile, and laundry drying in the sun. The beautifully painted trees tossed by a gentle breeze, and especially the spectacular expanse of sky and broken cloud, tie this spontaneously observed yet precisely rendered vision to "A significant [new chapter [in the history of landscape painting, the phenomenon of painting in oils from nature in the open air" (Philip Conisbee and Franklin Kelly, National Gallery of Art Bulletin, 34, Spring 2006, pp. 2-17). That international movement, pioneered in late 18th c. studies of everyday Neapolitan scenes by the Welshman Thomas Jones, and brought into standard artistic currency through precisely observed plein-air paintings by J.-B.-C. Corot in France and Italy, John Constable in England, as well as Cole, Kensett and Church in America, provides the true frame of reference for this exceptional image. Its closest stylistic parallels are with one of the most interesting of those European revolutionaries, the Danish artist Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (1783-1853), whose seemingly accidental views of cluttered Roman courtyards, festooned with laundry on sun-drenched mornings, are direct antecedents of this almost shockingly avant-garde American canvas. A more typically genre treatment of this same back porch, painted two years later (possibly in emulation of Johnson's magisterial prototype?) in 1860, by the Scottish-American artist John Mackie Falconer (1820-1903)-now in a private collection near the site- provides not only a secure identification, through its reverse inscription as the 1767-1772 "Wynkoop Homestead, Ulster Co., N.Y.", but also very clearly defines, through its naively narrative mode, just how exceptional Johnson's almost geometrically precisionist style really is. Having studied in his late teens at the National Academy's "antique school" in 1845-1847, Johnson dated his first landscape in 1848, and began exhibiting in the following year; this painting is thus an early work, from the end of his first decade of independent activity (and was evidently his major production in 1858, a year in which no other work of his is known: John I. H. Bauer, "The Exact Brushwork of Mr. David Johnson," American Art Journal 12:4, Autumn 1980, pp. 32-65). Johnson is documented to have traveled abroad only in 1862 (Natalie Spassky, American Paintings, vol. 2, New York, 1985, p. 290); so that this picture's almost preternatural resemblance to the most advanced European art, of his own and the preceding generation, seems truly to illustrate an instance of native-born intellectual and artistic achievement. We are grateful to Stanford Levy, New Paltz, NY, for his help in identifying this subject.