Oil on paper laid down to card, 1894. 106x160 mm; 4⅛x6¼ inches. Signed lower left, and with a pencil dedication on the mat.
Provenance The artist, New York. Given by the artist to the dedicatee Henry W. Bookstaver, New York, April 1894. James Graham & Sons, New York. Property of a Midwestern Estate.
Literature E. McCausland, The Life and Work of Edward Lamson Henry, N.A., New York State Museum, Albany, 1945, page 199, number 263 (illustrated page 288, figure 184).
According to Elizabeth McCausland, the artist's archival materials given to the New York State Museum, held correspondence between Edward Lamson Henry and Henry W. Bookstaver, the dedicatee of this oil on paper, from April 1891. Bookstaver, a Justice of the New York Court of Common Pleas, and his wife May, owned several works by Henry.
McCausland compares the present work with a later painting Food for Scandal (1907), which depicts two elderly women outside of the town news depot watching a young couple take a buggy ride. Henry's works are notable for their penchant for characterizing small town gossip, which reflected the burgeoning mass market for sensational and scandalized news stories. As a judge, Bookstaver became the center of a Tammany Hall scandal in 1889 while hearing a divorce case between New York Sheriff and politician James A. Flack and Mary A. Flack.
