The Advance-Guard, or The Military Sacrifice (The Ambush)
Frederic Remington
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The Story
Eastman Johnson painted this composition in 1876, 100 years after the founding of the United States. The centennial fostered a sense of nostalgia among some residents as industrialization and urban growth rapidly transformed the nation. Husking Bee, Island of Nantucket depicts a seasonal gathering on the rural Massachusetts island. Community members work together to shuck corn and ready the harvest, a traditional activity that was far removed from daily life for many in the late 19th century.
Johnson employed a warm palette and loose brushwork to describe this agrarian subject, presenting an uncomplicated vision of cooperation and closeness to the land.
As Oil on canvas (69.6 × 138.2 cm (27 3/8 × 54 3/8 in.)), the work shows the tool marks and layering choices typical of Eastman Johnson's output in this period — decisions about ground, underpainting, and glaze that a photograph can only partly convey.
Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Light hardens into edge, drapery becomes shroud, and the body is staged like an argument about mortality.
Housed at Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, the painting has passed through the hands of collectors, dealers, and institutions before reaching public view — a provenance that is itself part of the object's story.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
