Horace Pippin

These works offer contrasting perspectives on motherhood and domesticity. Pippin, a self-taught African American painter, emphasizes the spirit of simplicity in colonial-era Quaker homes. Quietly depicting a mother and her infant child, he evokes associations with what could be seen as a less complicated historical moment in American domestic life. Smith presents a dress she made for herself during a pregnancy. Maternity Dress challenges social conventions and clothing designs that conceal, rather than celebrate, the transformed physical condition of pregnant women.

[see also: 2007.8]

A self-taught artist, the grandson of slaves, and the son of a laborer and a domestic worker, Horace Pippin came to painting in his mid 30s. His right arm was crippled during service in France in 1917, but he wrote that the wartime experience “brought out all the art in me.” His subjects, ranging from childhood memories to religious narratives, were first composed in his imagination: “I do over the picture several times in my mind,” he said, “and when I am ready to paint it I have all the details I need.” As a result, Pippin’s work is characterized by clarity, selection, and order.