The House that Jeff Built
David Claypoole Johnston, American, 1799 - 1865
1863
Etching, engraving, and roulette on wove paper
Overall: 11 5/16 × 15 1/4 in. (28.7 × 38.7 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
PR.973.51
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
19th century
Object Name
Research Area
Not on view
Inscriptions
Inscribed, lower center: Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1863 by D.C. Johnston in the Clerks office of the District Court of Massachusetts
Label
In this work, printed in the middle of the Civil War, David Claypoole Johnston transforms the progressive nursery rhyme “The House That Jack Built” into “The House That Jeff Built,” a moral indictment of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Progressively narrated to illustrate the work’s interconnecting themes, each vignette shows an aspect of chattel slavery, from enslaved people laboring in cotton fields to the slave auction. All the White people implicated in this system are described as selling “their own souls to a boss with a tail” (the devil). Known for his satires of current events, Johnston’s use of this particular nursery rhyme is not intended to be humorous but instead ironic. The print’s critique, fails to acknowledge the history of slavery in the country as a whole, including in New England.
From the 2026 exhibition Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, curated by Amelia Kahl (Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming) and Alisa Swindell (Associate Curator of Photography)
Exhibition History
American Intellectual and Cultural History Through the Civil War, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, History 30, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 10-September 6, 1992.
Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, Jaffe and Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 20, 2025 - July 11, 2026.
Nineteeth Century American Prints, Carpenter Galleries, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 25-June 22, 1977.
No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in conjunction with the Humanities Institute, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 6-December 9, 2007.
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