Artist Horace Pippin, always his own man

When Horace Pippin died in West Chester in July 1946 at age 58, the New York Times obituary praised the painter as a "noted Negro artist, who taught himself to paint."

The Times then reported that "the simplicity of the primitives he produced" had led Chester County critic Christian Brinton to compare Pippin to "Pittsburgh road digger John Kane, famed housepainter artist."

Even in death, Pippin was presented not on his own terms, but in relation to a white artist in a comparison made by a white critic.

The odd thing about the story of Horace Pippin, who started painting only in his 40s, is that Pippin himself often gets lost.

He is presented as a "primitive" artist of simple scenes who was "discovered" by the likes of Brinton, N.C. Wyeth, and Albert C. Barnes, and then promoted through the wealthy white art world of socialites, celebrities, and gallery owners.

That view, which makes Pippin out to have been something of a pawn, was challenged by curator Judith E. Stein's 1994 exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Now the Brandywine River Museum of Art has mounted a Pippin retrospective of about 65 works, opening Saturday, that further undercuts the notion of Pippin as a naïf managed by powerful white interests.

At the Brandywine - where "Horace Pippin: The Way I See It," runs through July 19 - he emerges more fully as a sophisticated captain of his own ship, confident and complex, said Audrey Lewis, curator of the show.

"Pippin saw the value in his work," she said. "It was not meant to be seen only by family and friends. It deserved a wider audience."

The received story about Pippin's "discovery" involves critic Brinton and artist Wyeth seeing Pippin paintings in the window of a West Chester shoe-repair store. They excitedly smoothed the way for some to be shown at the Chester County Art Association's 1937 annual exhibition, and from there Pippin was quickly picked up by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

MoMA curator Dorothy C. Miller wrote to Brinton: "I have been told that you have sponsored an exhibition of paintings by a Negro 'primitive' or naive artist."

Stein's research showed, however, that Pippin very much made himself available for "discovery."

"Self-assuredness is not uncommon with self-taught artists," Stein said. "He enjoyed his art and wanted it seen. He knew it was good and he had belief in his worth."

Barnes, progenitor of the eponymous foundation, had a long-standing interest in African and African American art, so it was not surprising that he soon entered Pippin's world, acquiring works while they were cheap and championing the West Chester artist.

Typically, he cajoled Pippin to take art appreciation classes at his Merion foundation and even gave him critical suggestions. On one such occasion, Pippin replied, "Do I tell you how to run your foundation? Don't tell me how to paint."

Barnes was important to Pippin, without question, praising his work and writing essays. The other white critics and dealers, including his Philadelphia dealer, Robert Carlen, were critical in launching and maintaining Pippin's career in the 1940s.

But the art they were promoting was always presented as simple - "naive" or "primitive" in the lexicon of the day.

Art historian Anne Monahan, who has contributed an essay to the catalog for the Brandywine exhibition, suggests that simplicity is a mask Pippin used to hide more complex intentions.

The artist, who was wounded in World War I and began painting in part as a means of rehabilitating his right shoulder, famously said that "pictures just come to my mind, and I tell my heart to go ahead." In other words, he was saying, he presented his deepest, most rending memories as images on canvas.

Well, maybe not quite.

Monahan argues persuasively that Pippin manipulated scenes and left the impression he was presenting "memory," when in fact he was presenting carefully worked out canvases drawn from a variety of sources - like the most academic of painters.

John Brown Going to His Hanging (1942), for instance, has often been associated with Pippin's mother, a free woman who Pippin said was present at the rebel abolitionist's hanging in 1859.

Far from its being a guileless presentation of his mother's memories, however, Monahan says Pippin drew on at least four separate illustrations to cast his work. He places what appears to be a whip or a noose near the one African American woman facing the viewer, who may actually have been based on images of Sojourner Truth, not the artist's mother, as many have maintained.

John Brown is "a total indictment of lynching," Monahan said. And Pippin was "savvy enough to make this one of the most successful, politically oriented artworks in America," she added. "Yet no one has recognized this."

The Barracks, painted toward the end of World War II, has been taken, Monahan noted, as a protest against war and the segregated military. In this case, she argued that Pippin's personal experiences have been underplayed by critics.

In Monahan's reading, the painting becomes a multilayered commentary on African American "manliness" and camaraderie. Lewis notes that The Barracks, although it sheds light on Pippin's personal experience of war, shares an aura of domesticity and "a quiet intimacy" with paintings such as Saying Prayers. And the closeness of African American men, this time in combat, recalls the fraternal unity of such home-front scenes as Harmonizing.

"The way Pippin's story has been told has been through the white people who want to claim credit for his success," Monahan said. "Pippin gets lost in that and is seen as a manifestation of their efforts."

His success, she said, "is testament to his resourcefulness."

Horace Pippin: The Way I See It

Opens Saturday, up through July 29 at the Brandywine River Museum of Art, Route 1 at Creek Road, Chadds Ford

Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily

Admission: $15; 65 and over, $10; students and children 6-12, $6; 5 and under, free.

Information: 610-388-2700 or www.brandywinemuseum.orgEndText

215-854-5594