53 of 100: Horace Pippin, artist

Part of the reason I keep taking editing/proofreading work is to keep learning. I almost always stumble on something I didn't know. Today's example is a folk artist from Pennsylvania named Horace Pippin (1888–1946), who was referenced for his series of three paintings from late in his life called Holy Mountain, a dark variation on the Quaker artist Edward Hicks's Peaceable Kingdom series (ca. 1822–49—of which 62 exemplars still exist). 

Holy Mountain III, 1945

The reason these works were mentioned in a book about necks is present in the forest just behind the ox on the left: a victim of lynching. Pippin's other Holy Mountains also include nooses, cemetery crosses, red poppies—allusions to both racial violence and the violence of war. 

Pippin served in WWI in the Harlem Hellfighters, the all-Black 369th Infantry Unit. A month before Armistice he was hit by a German sniper's bullet, which severely damaged his right shoulder. As part of his physical therapy, he took up drawing, a practice he'd enjoyed as a boy (with a focus on racehorses and jockeys), and by 1930 he was painting on stretched canvas. Ultimately he created more than 140 works and became very well known, especially during the last eight years of his life. Since then he has been the subject of several major retrospectives, as well as a book of poetry and several children's books. The National Gallery of Art has an online 1st–2nd-grade curriculum devoted to his life and work, in which students "will discover how to 'read" the clues in his painting School Studies and write a story about the work. By solving counting and time problems, students will also create their own 'secret number' painting."

School Studies, 1944

Pippin is known for the wide variety of themes he explored, starting with his service in WWI, and branching into landscapes, portraits, still lifes, biblical subjects, and the history of slavery and racial segregation in the US. His first major oil painting was The Ending of the War: Starting Home, from 1930–33:

One of his last paintings was The Park Bench—which may be a self-portrait but more likely depicts a neighbor of his in West Chester, PA, who enjoyed sitting and thinking on a local bench: 

Here are a few more examples of his work (click to see large on black):

Cabin in the Cotton, mid-1930s

The Wash, ca. 1942

Harmonizing, 1944

Victorian Interior, 1945

Supper Time, 1940

Mr. Prejudice, 1943

Domino Players, 1943

The Getaway, 1939