The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, USA — The American Wing, Gallery 736.
Location History:
The painting was created in the United States in 1851 and was exhibited/featured in the December 1852 auction of the American Art-Union, a subscription organisation that promoted American art through exhibitions and prints. Its later documented provenance connects it with the collection of Mrs. J. Insley Blair. It subsequently passed to Mrs. Screven Lorillard (Alice Whitney), from whose bequest it entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2016. It is now part of the Met’s American Wing collection, accession number 2016.797.19
Preparing for Christmas (Plucking Turkeys) is a painting created by an American artist Francis William Edmonds in 1851. The artwork depicts an everyday scene in the countryside during the nineteenth century. The image shows three workers in the farmhouse’s yard. Two white men pluck two white turkeys that will be prepared for the upcoming Christmas dinner. The two workers are busy, while a young black man is idle, warming his hands. In the background, one can see the barrels, baskets, various tools, a few of the fowls hanging from the beams, a big kettle for cooking, and logs for the fire. Farmhouses are scattered behind the scene in the distance. The area is surrounded by snow, which creates a cold and severe atmosphere.
Edmonds’ composition is full of contrasting colors such as warm brown, green, and red tones, which make the scene pop out on the white snow. The artist has managed to capture the essence of the story perfectly. The meticulous depiction of the characters’ clothing, the tools, the trees, and the home accessories gives the image a specific look, making it resemble a genre painting. The simplicity and precision of the drawing, the choice of the colors, and attention to detail make the artwork similar to dutch genre scenes by seventeenth-century painters. However, the painting hides a more profound meaning and several essential messages.
The scene is framed around two white men working together, while the third young black worker is idle and warms his hands. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, such a juxtaposition suggests complicated racial undertones. It also explains that the given artwork was created at a critical historical moment when the racist slavery institution started to be challenged in the United States. According to the museum, Edmonds was a member of the Quaker community, where abolitionism was widely preached; however, it does not mean that the artist’s work did not perpetuate racist attitudes. Indeed, the painter seemed to depict a black person as a comic or inferior figure, which was typical for the local American art of the period. Thus, the painting has multiple hidden meanings, reflecting the complex relationship between black and white people in the United States of the nineteenth century.
'Preparing for Christmas' painted by Francis William Edwards perfectly reflects the domestic atmosphere at Christmas time. In this work, the artist depicted the domestic preparations performed by the characters in their anticipation of the holiday. The scene is full of warmth, domestic life and pleasant anticipation of the holiday. The painter depicted both the characters and the surroundings including the room, its interior decoration and domestic things and even clothing of the people in the picture.
The soft rendering of light and composition give the painting the feeling of peacefulness and coziness. The arrangement of the characters is made to guide the viewer's eyes to the process of preparation for the holiday. While the Christmas event is usually depicted in the religious context, the artist shows it from the point of view of an ordinary family life.
