A Month's Darning

In their subject matter and compositional format, Perry’s watercolor paintings are quite similar to his oils, and his method of applying paint was consistently characterized by fastidious attention to detail. Like his colleague Eastman Johnson, Perry studied in Düsseldorf and Paris, where he acquired a respect for careful draftsmanship. He exhibited “A Month’s Darning” in 1876 at the American Society of Painters in Water Colors and later the same year at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where it was acclaimed for its evocation of times past. The critic for the “New-York Tribune” found the woman’s head to be “the best part” of the composition and only regretted “that the sweet-faced girl . . . should have such large-footed men-folks to darn for.”