Blanket Chest
Artist Unidentified, Matteson Type
Vicinity of South Shaftsbury, Vermont
c. 1825
Paint on wood
40 x 40 x 17 3/4 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Howard and Jean Lipman in honor of Robert Bishop, American Folk Art Museum director (1977–1991), 1991.10.1
Photo by John Parnell

The distinctive patterning on this blanket chest identifies it with a group of similar pieces of case furniture made in the vicinity of South Shaftsbury, Vermont. Stylistically, the painted decoration is defined by cross-banding, stringing, and bold elliptical strokes. The grain painting may in fact be a rural interpretation of locally produced high-style furniture fashioned from “curled maple,” which was, as Zadock Thompson noted in his History of Vermont (1842), “used by chair makers and cabinet makers in many kinds of their work.” When carefully pieced, this figured indigenous wood created dramatic visual effects that have been likened to the “illusion of motion.” The furniture made by brothers Daniel and Asa Loomis demonstrates the direct influence of New York City design on high-style Vermont furniture, particularly that of the Richard Allison shop. This furniture in turn influenced the work of rural craftsmen, such as the unidentified maker who produced the brilliantly patterned South Shaftsbury furniture that simulates, in abstract painted designs, the high color and patterning of native maple.

The Shaftsbury group, previously ascribed to Thomas Matteson, was first identified by Caroline Hebb, who noted similar decorative traits among seven pieces of painted furniture, two of which were dated 1824 and signed with the names Thomas Matteson and Thomas G. Matison. Since then, two additional pieces bearing the Matteson name have been located, one with the intriguing inscription “Benonia Matteson to B. Burlingame Dr. [debit] / To Paint $2.70 / To Paint & Grain Chest $2.00 / $4.70.” To date, six Thomases and four Benonias can be counted among the large Matteson family in Vermont during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, though none has been specifically associated with furniture making or decorating. In addition to the exuberant painted decoration, the group shares the construction trait of trapezoidal pieces of wood, some of which are notched into lower backboards. On the back of each chest, two boards are nailed to the side panels, with the top board usually much wider than the bottom one.”

S.D. Plum Tavern Sign
Artist unidentified
Probably Meriden, Connecticut
1813
Paint on pine with iron
51 x 34 x 3 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2013.1.55
Photo courtesy Sotheby’s, New York

Sometime around 1803, Seth D. Plum bought a house on Broad Street in Meriden, Connecticut. Conveniently located along the route of the new Meriden turnpike, which opened in 1799, it served as a tavern for many years. Meriden was a busy stopover, long known as halfway point on the road between Hartford and New Haven. As for Seth Plum, he appears to have been an enterprising man who achieved a certain level of prosperity, for he also operated a tin shop in Meriden from about 1808 to 1835.

The signboard for Plum’s tavern is a fine example of the most popular type of American tavern sign from about the middle of the eighteenth century until the mid-1820s or so. A scrolled and framed painted pine plank set in a vertical orientation between two turned posts, it incorporates design elements that were also typical of the architecture and furniture of the period. The coach and horses are particularly engaging, especially the way in which the horses are arranged one slightly in front of the other, with multiple pairs of legs giving the impression of rapid movement.

Signboards have a long history in both North America and Europe. In 1644, the General Court of Connecticut ordered all towns in the colony to provide a place where travelers and strangers could obtain food and lodging. Following English tradition, inns and taverns were prominently marked with painted signs, often suspended between two high posts as close as possible to the road. At the same time, hanging signs had become subject to regulation in several European cities because of their ever-expanding numbers. A few years after London’s Great Fire of 1666, for example, an ordinance was enacted that required signboards to be affixed to the walls of buildings instead of projecting out into the streets. Apparently, the efforts of merchants and tradesmen to continually outdo one another in order to attract business had resulted in a dense, overhead canopy that clogged narrow urban streets and threatened pedestrians.

Connecticut supported a large number of taverns and inns in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of its extensive network of roads and the heavy traffic generated by its proximity to several urban areas in New England and New York. In 1800, more than 650 licensed innkeepers were operating there. Consequently, the state was something of a center for signboard production and ornamental painting. It has been estimated that more than five thousand signs were used by taverns, inns, and hotels in Connecticut between 1750 and 1850. Of these, only about one hundred survive today.

Storage Jar or Crock
Artist unidentified
New England, probably Boston
c. 1850–1870
Glazed gray stoneware with cobalt decoration
26 5/8 x 15 1/4 in. diam. (at top)
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2013.1.24
Photo © 2000 John Bigelow Taylor, New York

Durable and inexpensive salt-glazed stoneware decorated with cobalt oxide blue slip was made in most parts of New England. The production of commercial stonewares increased as commerce and the Industrial Revolution brought about the wider processing and distribution of foodstuffs, spirits, and agricultural goods. Manufacturers up and down the East Coast placed orders for stoneware jars, bottles, jugs, and larger open-mouthed crocks, and many potteries offered to customize orders with the names of enterprises, various decorative advertising and ornamental patterns, or scenes such as that decorating this large snuff container.

Research into manufacturing potteries in Boston have revealed no such pottery operating under this name or at this address during the nineteenth century. Therefore, it is assumed that the inscribed company of “Clark Brewer and Son” was a dry-goods merchant or tobacco shop at the address, and that this crock was a custom-designed advertising fixture for the retailing of snuff within that establishment. Rappee snuff was a dark, pungent, finely ground mixed snuff, also known as Cavendish or Indian weed, and was manufactured in the West Indies, England, and Holland, as well as America. Functioning much like the fabled “cigar-store Indian,” this crock’s decorative scene depicts an American Indian chief in full regalia offering tobacco in both its raw and its processed state. Large in scale, this scene, perhaps of the legendary Seminole chief Osceola, would have been a curiosity drawing attention to the store and its contents.

Examples of nineteenth-century American commercial stonewares with detailed, intricately incised sgraffito decoration on a large scale are quite rare, and few of this quality are known to survive. Its size, with a capacity of more than one hundred dry pints, as well as its finely executed decoration and glaze, suggest the work of a skilled potter, whose identity remains unknown.

The Titanic
James Crane (1877–1974)
Ellsworth, Maine
c. 1968
Oil on oil cloth with paper collage
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Robert Bishop, 1985.37.1

Artists, even after the invention of photography in the mid-nineteenth century, continued in the twentieth century to paint portraits as a means of documenting people or architecture or ships. Ship portraiture occurs throughout art history, and this painting of the Titanic by Maine artist James Crane is a useful way for the artist to convey his admiration of oceangoing vessels. Crane’s multi-perspective view of the ill-fated Titanic is a captivating portrait because the innocent appeal and charm contrasts so sharply with the devastating tragedy endured by the passengers of the doomed ocean liner in 1912.

Crane painted several versions of the Titanic, as well as numerous other portraits of ships north of Bar Harbor along the Route 1 coastal road of Ellsworth, Maine. He also painted townscapes. Crane worked with readily available material, such as paint, oil cloth, bed sheets, plywood, and paper collage. His entire life was peppered with creative exploration. As a young man he invented a “lock washer,” and harbored a desire to construct a flying machine based on a 1909 vision he experienced (which he only realized toward the end of his life). Although his airship never successfully flew, he displayed it in his yard alongside hand-built wooden ship models and paintings, all made by the artist while in his 80s

Berks County Farmscape
John Rasmussen (1828–1895)
Berks County, Pennsylvania
c. 1879–1886
Oil on zinc-plated tin
26 3/8 x 35 3/8 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.15

This pristine view of a prosperous Berks County farmstead presents an idyllic scene of verdant fields receding into the distance in a patchwork of color. A locomotive chugs across the foreground promising continued progress. The sense of stability communicated through this crisp rendering is far removed from the difficult circumstances of the artist who painted it. John Rasmussen arrived in New York from Germany in 1865, and is listed as a painter and “fresco painter” in the Reading, Pennsylvania, business directories from 1867 through 1879. By June of 1879, widowed and suffering from chronic drinking problems, he was committed to the Berks County Almshouse. Here he met fellow inmate and painter, Charles Hofmann, whose portraits of the almshouse and its environs inspired the younger artist to create landscapes that were similar in composition. Rasmussen painted at least six views of the almshouse on the thin sheets of metal available through the institution’s wagon and machine shops, as well as a wider range of subject matter.

Learning the ABCs
Attributed to Mary B. Tucker (dates unknown)
Probably Massachusetts
c. 1840–1844
Watercolor and pencil on paper
19 1/4 x 23 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2013.1.15
Photo © 2000 John Bigelow Taylor, New York

As very young children, boys and girls received similar educations. During the eighteenth century, this was often begun at home or in a “dame” school (similar to a nursery school). By the time this watercolor was painted, though, toward the middle of the nineteenth century, even very young children were sent to the local district school. Instruction consisted mainly of learning the abcs and other simple lessons through hornbooks or primers. The props in this watercolor are indications of the children’s respective ages. The younger child is a mere baby, as evidenced by the straw rattle she holds. The older child holds a primer with the alphabet and simple illustrated words. Although the gender of the children appears indeterminate, the older child is probably a boy, as he is wearing a suit with buttons and wears his hair with a side part; rattles usually appear in portraits of girls.

Life in the Twenties
Antonio Esteves (1910–1983)
Brooklyn, New York
1973
Oil on Masonite
19 7/8 x 23 3/4 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of the artist, 1981.9.1

Antonio Esteves, like many artists, trained and untrained, looked back to his early life experiences for subject matter and inspiration. Esteves painted this interior scene when he was in his 60s, living in Brooklyn (across the street from the Brooklyn Museum of Art), and just beginning what would be a ten-year (1973–1983) career in painting. Here, Esteves remembered an scene from his childhood apartment; he is most likely the young boy with a book sitting at the dining table. Three adults are cooking, cleaning, and relaxing. The pace and appliances of pre–World War II life are highlighted in this composition. Esteves aptly shows the sanctuary that apartments had become for city dwellers.

Esteves received artistic recognition in 1976, when he participated in an annual art show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Twentieth-century folk art was generating a lot of interest in the New York City art world at the time, thanks in part to a devoted group of collectors who lived in the city and were involved in the fledgling, then fifteen-year-old American Folk Art Museum. Esteves benefited from this cultural moment, as did some of his peers, including Vestie Davis and Morris Hirshfeld.

Spiral Religious Text
Johann Adam Eyer (1755–1837)
Probably Bedminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
c. 1780–1785
Watercolor and ink on paper
8 5/8 x 6 7/8 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.36
Photo © 2000 John Bigelow Taylor, New York

A strong tradition of embellished and calligraphic forms was transmitted to Pennsylvania and other areas through Germanic immigration to America. Executed from the early eighteenth century through the middle of the nineteenth, fraktur was made primarily by schoolteachers and ministers for their local constituencies. Johann Adam Eyer, whose work influenced succeeding generations, was one of the most prolific fraktur artists. Although a Lutheran himself, he served as a schoolmaster in several Mennonite schools and in many Pennsylvania counties. In these schools he continued a tradition established by early schoolmaster Christopher Dock (?–1771) of rewarding students with small gifts of fraktur. In addition to the primary forms of fraktur such as Taufscheine (birth records), Eyer originated decorated Notenbüchleine (tune booklets), and made rewards of merit, bookplates, and writing samples for students. Early in his career he also made a few spiral religious texts, such as this example, also probably intended as a reward for a pupil.

Bethesda Fountain
Vestie Davis (1903–1978)
New York City
1964
Oil on canvas
18 x 24 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Gloria Bley Miller, 2002.28.2
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Contemporary folk art and self-taught art are frequently thought to be strictly rural phenomena. But a contemporary urban environment is just as likely to cultivate creative aspirations as a rural one; perhaps even more so, considering the preponderance of cultural stimulation available in any American city. Take Vestie Davis, for example. Davis started his life as an artist, when in his words, “One day in 1947 I was walking on 57th Street and came to a big gallery. I looked in, saw some pictures I liked, said to myself, ‘I can paint like that.’ So I walked into an artist’s material store.…” Not only was the creative impulse nurtured in urban New York, but the creative context also provided the subject matter for Davis, who captured the New York community at work and at play. His compositions of Coney Island, Wall Street, and Times Square charmingly illustrate life in the city. Working with oil on canvas and quickly establishing a flat, colorful style, Davis documented the crowded, congested landscape of twentieth-century urban America. The subject of this 1964 painting of Bethesda Fountain, a Central Park landmark and popular meeting place for New Yorkers, though made more than forty years ago, looks much the same today because Davis gives in to generic fashion statements and adopts a sameness with his figures. This creates a timelessness to his canvases. The lack of a multicultural crowd, however, is a glaring omission to most millennial viewers.

Davis was a savvy businessman who successfully sold his paintings to many collectors. Explaining the crowded quality of his compositions, he once said, “I paint what people want, and they want what’s familiar to them. I painted Nathan’s hot dog stand with three hundred people, all of them eating or drinking. The more people I put in, the faster they sold.”

Nelson Mandela
Arliss Watford (1924–1998)
Ahoskie, North Carolina
c. 1980s
Paint on wood
27 x 6 x 3 3/4 in.
American Folk Art Museum, Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.62
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

An African American carving a likeness of Nelson Mandela, a world leader who embodies the fight for justice, vividly illustrates the twentieth-century global community. Mandela, the first democratically elected president of South Africa and one of the heroic figures of the twentieth century, was imprisoned in his homeland at the time that Arliss Watford carved his portrait. Apartheid was not yet abolished in South Africa and Mandela was a prisoner on Robbins Island, but nonetheless Watford shows the freedom fighter as strong, formidable, and proud, even presidential. It is almost as if the artist forecasts for us Mandela’s future leadership role in world politics.

Watford worked as a bricklayer and dry dock worker in Virginia before opening a used furniture and television repair shop in eastern North Carolina after World War II. He had whittled in wood throughout his life, but in the 1980s he started to explore figurative carving on a larger scale. Working mostly with red cedar but also on occasion cypress knee wood, the artist created simple, compact, figurative sculpture. He said, “I just always had to be carving something, not to sell to anybody but just to carve.” Watford often chose to create images of famous world figures as often as he represented his neighbors and people from his community. Locals recall that visits to Watford’s workshop were like a field trip to a local museum of black history because every surface displayed carvings depicting twentieth-century black life in the United States and beyond.

Country Band of Five
Shields Landon Jones (1901–1997)
Hinton, West Virginia
c. early 1970s
Paint on wood with pencil
5 in. high each
American Folk Art Museum, Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.69a–e
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Many rural communities maintain the tradition of whittling, which is how Shields Landon Jones started carving. He readily took to the hobby and in a short time excelled in his craft, expanding his abilities to render a figure, increase his scale, and incorporate pencil, stain, and paint.

Jones was inspired by his life experiences; in his West Virginia community, he was known as an accomplished fiddler, and musicians are one of his frequent subjects. This “country band” includes five musicians (the fiddler may be a self-portrait); the small scale of the figures indicates that it may be an early work by the artist. Each figure throws a strong and effective emotional punch, and the varied postures and facial expressions help individualize members of the band. The unpainted male figure, leaning forward and looking up, appears to be caught up in the music-making and transfixed by the sounds.

Gift Drawing: A Reward of True Faithfulness from Mother Lucy to Eleanor Potter
Polly Ann (Jane) Reed (1818–1881)
New Lebanon, New York
1848
Watercolor and ink on paper
11 3/8 x 10 1/2 in. (sight)
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2013.1.52

Beginning in 1837, an intense religious revival swept through the Shaker villages. Over a period of twenty or more years known as the Era of Manifestations, or Mother’s Work, Believers accepted visionary experiences as a part of daily life. These phenomena “received by inspiration” were recognized as “gifts” by the Shaker leadership, and included messages, songs, and drawings. A little more than two hundred gift drawings survive, all but a few the work of women at the villages in New Lebanon, New York, and Hancock, Massachusetts. Polly Reed, the meticulous scribe who recorded this gift, also transcribed visions into heart- and leaf-shaped cutouts, a spiritual map, and other works in watercolor. Mother Lucy was Lucy Wright (1760–1821), a principal leader of the United Society of Believers during its formative years. The drawing also contains a visionary message believed to have been received from Mother Ann Lee (1736–1784), the founder of the Society.

Assemblage of Crowd Scenes
Purvis Young (1943–2010)
Miami, Florida
Early 1990s
Paint on found wood98 1/2 x 58 x 2 1/2 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of T. Marshall Hahn Jr., 1995.22.2
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

A stint in prison as a young man opened up Purvis Young to the world of art. While serving time for armed robbery, he discovered his creative talent and studied the art mural tradition, particularly urban murals from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Chicago’s Wall of Respect. He also admired canonized masters—El Greco, Rembrandt, and van Gogh, among others. Young distills all these influences into his paintings, books, and assemblages. His first project in his neighborhood of Overtown—a desolate section of urban Miami—was an impromptu mural he painted on his block in the late 1960s; sadly, it no longer exists. He has since received several public art commissions, including one in the House of Blues restaurant in Orlando, Florida.

Knowing that his first attempt at artmaking was an outdoor mural, it is not surprising that he continues to work on a large scale. Extremely prolific, Young has filled his vast home studio in a warehouse building with stacks of works, all covered with his trademark subjects—writhing crowds of people, arms upraised; powerful horses; tall, commanding pregnant women; armies of trucks and clusters of buildings.

Assemblage of Crowd Scenes is a large piece that recalls Robert Rauschenberg’s Combine paintings. Many small elements make a whole, tied together by similarly colored, rough-hewn frames. Not presenting an overall narrative, the various images are turned at different angles, though the entire piece is weighted by the large green rectangular painting at the base, which anchors the otherwise quiet palette. The activity within the painting, however, stands in stark contrast to the muted colors. Seething figures gather with upraised arms, hips cocked, in a stance that is simultaneously celebratory and urgent. This contradiction creates an energy in each “snapshot” and unifies the whole. A few scenes include trucks and vehicles, and in one composition the all-seeing eye, a familiar Young motif, is apparent. According to the artist, this eye, when painted blue, represents oppression by the white man. Assemblage of Crowd Scenes presents a tremendous visual cacophony that underscores the often fast, loud, and cluttered life of its maker’s urban environs. Naturally, Young’s figures are drawn as mere gestures of form—the artist has little time to document the fast-moving action that unfolds daily in the city around him.

Sketch Book
Purvis Young (1943–2010)
Miami, Florida
1978
Mixed media in scrapbook tied with yellow cord
10 3/4 x 16 in.
American Folk Art Museum, Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.68
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

A short stint in prison opened up the world of art to Purvis Young. While serving time for armed robbery, he studied the art-mural tradition, particularly urban murals from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Chicago’s Wall of Respect. He also admired canonized masters, including Rembrandt, El Greco, and van Gogh. The artist distills all of these influences into his paintings, books, and assemblages.

Young’s sketchbooks are crowded, dense things. This scrapbook is weighted down by the addition of more pieces of paper glued to the original pages. Endless renderings of crowds, arms raised high in protest and/or celebration fill each page. Written statements such as “Purvis How Long It Going To Take” or “You Call This Justice” seem to suggest that this entire sketchbook is a protest piece. Oppression and inequality are admonished by Young, while civil rights are championed within the pages of his journal. The quick, confident lines, the brush of color wash, show that the artist works as rapidly in this form as he does when painting.

Mt. Demavend 18,934 ft near Mashhad Iran
Joseph Yoakum (1890–1972)
Chicago
1966
Watercolor and ballpoint pen on paper
12 x 17 15/16 in.
American Folk Art Museum, Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.65
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Mt. Damavand (or Demavend) is an active volcano near Tehran, Iran, unique in the region for its great height and classic volcanic shape. Mashhad, which means “place of martyrdom,” is east of Tehran and is a center of commerce in the region. Chicago artist Joseph Yoakum drew this image in 1966 and was possibly inspired by images he saw in the many books in his personal library: books on world geography, for example, as well as travel guides and an atlas.

Using watercolor, pastel, colored pencils, and chalk, Yoakum prolifically worked on small-size paper, producing a drawing every few days. He seems to have particularly enjoyed drawing mountainscapes, declaring his great wanderlust to the viewer. It was assumed that Yoakum imagined all these places even though he claimed to have traveled to all of the worldwide locales he depicted. Recent scholarship, however, takes into consideration the fact that the artist traveled extensively as a circus worker. Yoakum was an advance man for the circus, and some of his subjects were certainly painted from memory, rather than imagined vistas. The artist’s nomadic life prompted his admiration of voluptuous landscapes, which later invited his organic, painted interpretations of nature. His stylized lines border on abstraction, frequently implying faces in the mountainscapes.

Mexico City Full of Bargains
William Hawkins (1895–1990)Columbus, Ohio
c. 1983
Enamel housepaint on paneling
52 1/2 x 50 1/2 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Carl D. Lobell and Kate Stettner, 2004.2.1
Photo by Charles Bechtold

Grand scale is one distinctive quality of paintings by William Hawkins; a bold, aggressive palette is another. The formal combination of the two gives a punch to Hawkins’s artworks. Like many self-taught artists, he used readily available material like salvaged wood for a support and house-paint for media, and like many he scavenged images from popular media. Even though these are common characteristics among contemporary self-taught artists, however, each artist arrives to quite a singular aesthetic through creative exploration. An African American man who learned to draw by copying from popular media sources, such as magazine illustrations, horse-auction announcements, and illustrated calendars, Hawkins started painting full time in 1983, when he was in his eighties.

Hawkins’s painterly compositions are some of the most audacious of his peers. He likes them big, bold, strong, and powerful. He packages the works as art by building frames for them (his early work, like this example, have frames comprised of scrap pieces of wood molding painted by the artist and nailed directly on to his painted panels), and by signing and dating his work. In all likelihood, Hawkins was inspired by a popular media source (a travel magazine, perhaps?) to capture this image of a “bargain city.” William Hawkins’s optimism and bold artistic vision infused his art with an immediacy and a rare communicative strength

Gold Tower
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910–1983)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1970s
Paint on chicken bones and turkey bones
47 x 6 x 7 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Lewis B. Greenblatt, 1999.22.1

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein and his wife, Marie, were rarely financially secure, often living on the economic edge in Wisconsin. They frequently ate at fast-food restaurants and saved the remains, chicken bones, for Von Bruenchenhein’s creative inspirations. The artist built towers, spires, and chairs out of the bones, gluing them together into impossible structures and painting them in gilded palettes, further strengthening them. Unfathomable and beautiful, they are some of the most singular works in twentieth-century American sculpture.

Von Bruenchenhein’s world was not fully understood nor appreciated until after his death, but the artist did not choose to remain unknown—he tried, unsuccessfully, to attract the attention of clients, galleries, and museums. He certainly valued his artwork and held himself in high esteem: In a hand-tinted photographic self-portrait, the shirt he wears bears the bold declaration, “Time Produced None Better.”

Waterfalls
Miecieslaw Bogun (1917–1995)
New York City
1971
Oil on canvas with carpet
30 x 37 x 2 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill Jr., 1990.1.6
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Maceptaw Bogun lived in the Bronx and worked for the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority until he retired in 1983. Bogun was ordained as a minister in the now-closed Temple of Light church in 1951 and, years later, in St. Andrew’s Spiritual Church (also no longer in existence). The artist started to paint in the late 1960s when, in his words, he “decided to try oil painting, but only when the green light was given me by the Almighty.” Referring to his work as spiritual art, he painted approximately fifteen canvases between roughly the late 1960s and the late 1980s. Waterfalls, a 1971 composition, signed “Rev. Mac” below the symbol for infinity, has a hint of religiosity with the landscape crowned by a pastel rainbow; as a spiritualist, Bogun can be assumed to have a divine reverence for nature in general.

The most distinctive character of this oil painting is its texture and dimension. Using carpet to bring a third dimension to a two-dimensional art form, Bogun brought even more topographical quality to his work by adding multiple layers of paint. The artist was attempting to re-create the texture of running water with this unusual and idiosyncratic technique. This painstaking application successfully captures light on the canvas and suggests a foreground and middle ground, making for a startling new look at a conventional art form, landscape painting.

Faces of Africa II
Bessie Harvey (1929–1994)
Alcoa, Tennessee
1994
Paint on wood with wood putty, glitter, found objects, marbles, and beads
31 x 34 x 12 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift from the Mendelsohn Collection, 2002.20.1
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

In this work, Bessie Harvey proved herself a master of sculptural economy. Simply by tipping a slice of tree on its side so that stray branches became limbs and then spray-painting the entirety black, the artist imbued the timber with a human presence. Then, again with great restraint, Harvey added minimal wood putty for facial features and enhanced the limbs with white shells and marbles, bringing the creature closer to life. This simple and elegant sculpture is one of Harvey’s finest.

Faces of Africa II is one of a suite of three sculptures created in the last year of the artist’s life. Truly at the height of her ability and clearly quite skilled with indigenous materials, Harvey demonstrates the refinement of her artistry. This sculpture also declares the artist’s primary motivation in her artmaking, which was to free the spirits and souls she felt were captured in trees. As she said, “I have a feeling for Africa. I see African people in the trees and in the roots. I talk to the trees. There’s souls in the branches and roots. I frees them.”

While her art allowed Harvey to free souls from trees, it also freed her from some personal anguish. Harvey began her artistic endeavors in the 1970s, when she was middle-aged. She was raising eleven kids from two marriages and struggling with single parenthood. Sculpting proved very therapeutic. The work with trees connects her to other African American artists—many of whom used roots, branches, and trees as their primary artistic medium—and to her African heritage. Roots have a transformative purpose in many African cultures, where they figure importantly in healing, medicine, and related lore. It seems not too great a leap to observe that self-taught African-American artists employ roots in an effort to heal and to transform.

Encyclopedic Palace/Palazzo Enciclopedico/Palacio Enciclopedico/Palais Encyclopédique or Monumento Nazionale. Progetto Enciclopedico Palazzo (U.S. patent no. 179,277)
Marino Auriti (1891–1980)
Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
c. 1950s
Wood, plastic, glass, metal, hair combs, and model kit parts
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Colette Auriti Firmani in memory of Marino Auriti, 2002.35.1.
Photo c. 1950s, American Folk Art Museum Archives

“This building is an entirely new concept in museums, designed to hold all the works of man in whatever field, discoveries made and those which may follow,” wrote Marino Auriti of his goals for his Il Encyclopedico Palazzo del Mondo, the “Encyclopedic Palace of the World.” One of two known architectural models made in the mid-twentieth century by this self-taught artist, Auriti’s was an audacious concept: to create a museum to house humankind’s greatest achievements, “everything from the wheel to the satellite.” This object exemplifies the bold singularity of many contemporary self-taught creators. Not hemmed in by the strictures of the art academy, artists like Auriti follow their individual visions.

Born in Italy, Auriti came to the United States sometime between 1923 and the 1930s. He worked as an auto-body mechanic, but architecture was his great love. While Auriti’s concept is singular, the architectural plan for the Palazzo is rather classical. It is comprised of seven tiers of a lathe-turned skyscraper, made of mixed woods, metal, plastic (including hair combs), and celluloid, and topped by a television antennae. Transfer lettering on the lintel reflect Auriti’s values —“Forgive the First Time” and “Do Not Abuse Generosity.” A many-paged mission statement accompanies the palace, which is patented, exposing Auriti as a man who had the dreams of an architect and the soul of a philosopher. Upon retirement he started his serious endeavor building the palace. He acquired a patent, built a pyramid-shaped vitrine for his model, exhibited it twice (in a storefront and in a bank lobby), and received some press about it.

This model took about three years to build and is on a scale of 1:200, which means that if it were actually built, the palace would stand 136 stories and 2,322 feet, which would have made it the tallest building in the world at the time Auriti imagined it. The artist wanted the Palazzo built on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The sculpture, however, was instead stored in a warehouse for several decades.

Read more about the artist here.

Beast
Miles Carpenter (1889–1985)
Waverly, Virginia
After 1966
Paint on wood with rubber
26 x 39 1/2 x 33 in.
American Folk Art Museum, Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., 1998.10.14
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

“You may know your business, but no one else will if you don’t advertise,” Miles Carpenter at one time opined. The artist advertised his roadside ice, soda pop, and vegetable stand in Waverly, Virginia, by creating a menagerie of idiosyncratic, funky, and humorous sculptures of animals and people. Both an additive and subtractive sculptor (he constructed as well as carved his work), Carpenter explored a variety of methods and modes of working for nearly thirty years in order to achieve his artistic goals. The result is a range of expressions, from realistic carved renderings of watermelons to wild and outlandish root sculptures. Using roots as the basic understructure for sculpture is actually quite common for self-taught artists, though the intentions, motivations, and reasons for using roots is wide and varied.

This ambitious “root monster” is humorous and dynamic. Most museum visitors have learned how Michelangelo, a carver in stone, allowed the material to bring out the figure hidden inside. Miles Carpenter seems to echo this process, once recalling, “There’s something in there, under the surface of every piece of wood. You don’t need no design ‘cause it’s right there, you just take the bark off, and if you do it good, you can find something.”

Man on a Bucking Horse
Matteo Radoslovich (1882–1972)
West New York, New Jersey
c. 1947–1972
Paint on metal and wood with glass bottle
40 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 9 3/4 in.
American Folk Art Museum,gift of Dorothy & Leo Rabkin, 1983.17.20

“If it was a windy day, everything was moving,” Matteo Radoslovich’s daughter remembers of the artist’s backyard installation of more than thirty sculptures and wind toys in New Jersey. Radoslovich worked with found materials—wood scraps, glass jars, metal cans, and other sundry cast-offs—and positioned the works, depicting airplanes, animals, and whimsical characters, in star pattern. He was able to approach artmaking in such an innovative and imaginative way because of his lifelong occupation as a ships’ carpenter, first in the former Yugoslavia and later in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Outdoor environments such as Radoslovich’s typically begin modestly, with a wind toy, a bird bath, or a freestanding sculpture, and progressively grow to occupy every available space. And what may have been initiated for private enjoyment often commands pubic attention as the project grows in scale, ultimately becoming community spaces and even tourist attractions. In this way they can be seen as contemporary versions of the eighteenth-century folly. While Radoslovich built his creation in his backyard, it attracted an audience nonetheless.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Josephus Farmer (1894–1989)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1970–1975
Enamel on redwood
30 x 50 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill Jr., 1990.1.4
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Josephus Farmer masterly fit into his composition seven emblematic and iconic images of the ancient “wonders of the world.” Josephus Farmer masterfully fit into this composition seven emblematic and iconic images of the ancient “wonders of the world.” Taking on one of his favorite subjects, history, he used architecture and historic figuration as symbols for the great Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Mausolus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the lighthouse of Alexandria. A chronicler of historic and religious imagery, Farmer learned to shape simple wood panels into finely shaped relief carvings and compelling stories. Complex forms and rich coloration intensify the drama.

Using redwood and enamel paint, Farmer first carved with a utility knife. Later, he began to use elaborate woodcarving tools and an electric drill, which resulted in increasing depth of carving in his later work. Eventually, he began to work through to the other side of the panel, the voids welcome negative space in otherwise busy and cramped compositions.

Farmer was in his early 20s when he experienced an intense religious conversion to Christianity; this foreshadowed a life of preaching, ministry, and evangelism. Artmaking came later in life, upon retirement from his job as a hotel porter, when he was living in Milwaukee.

Ogden Family Mourning Piece
Ellen Ogden (1795–1870)
Probably Litchfield, Connecticut
1813
Watercolor and ink on silk, with original reverse-painted eglomisé mat in original gilded wood frame
22 7/8 x 29 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2013.1.42
Photo courtesy Sotheby’s, New York

The schoolgirl exercises known as mourning pieces evolved in part from the classical iconography that proliferated in European fine and decorative arts after archaeological sites such as Herculaneum and Pompeii were unearthed in the eighteenth century. The funerary forms that were discovered captured the popular imagination and inspired classical attitudes of mourning in a variety of mediums, including paintings that memorialized famous historical and literary figures. By the end of the eighteenth century, this vocabulary had reached the American republic, where it struck an especially responsive chord after the death of George Washington, in 1799. In America the classical motifs were combined with Christian sentiment to form an elegant symbolic system. Early examples embroidered in silk thread on silk were replaced by watercolor as this medium became widely available. Ellen Ogden’s painted mourning piece illustrates this transition by simulating the aesthetics of needlework. It was painted while she was a student at Sarah Pierce’s renowned Female Academy in Litchfield, Connecticut, which operated from 1792 until 1833. In this memorial, Ogden has pictured only herself and her parents, for her painting commemorates the deaths of her six siblings—one older sister and five younger brothers.

Child Holding a Doll and Shoe
Attributed to George G. Hartwell (1815–1901)
Probably Massachusetts or Maine
c. 1845
Oil on canvas
26 3/4 x 21 3/4 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Robert Bishop, 1992.10.1
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Posthumous portraiture was most prevalent in America during the nineteenth century, when the importance of the nuclear family resisted even death’s efforts to tear it asunder. Portraits after death were taken from the corpse, adapted from existing daguerreotypes, based on earlier portraits, or even modeled on family members with similar features. This portrait of an unidentified child is replete with symbols that would have been commonly understood by contemporary audiences to indicate that the child was deceased. These include the departing ship in the background, the dead, cut-off trunk with a cluster of grapes, and scattered roses. For many years it has been conjectured that the depiction of children with one shoe off was indicative of death, but some scholars have proposed that it is as likely to be a motif betokening the transition from infancy to toddlerhood. It was typical to show a deceased child as he or she was in life, surrounded by or holding familiar objects. Based on the doll held in this child’s hand, it is likely that the toddler is female.

The portrait was probably painted by George G. Hartwell, an artist who was closely allied to William Matthew Prior and Sturtevant J. Hamblin through the marriage of his sister Elizabeth to Joseph G. Hamblin, a brother of Sturtevant. Hartwell lived in Boston about the time that the Hamblins and Priors took up residence there, and it was then, in 1845, that he painted the signed and dated portrait of Jonathan Wheeler of Lowell that forms the basis for most of the attributions made to him. It is not known when Hartwell returned to his home state of Maine, but most of his adult life was spent there in the town of Lewiston, where he was a respected portrait, sign, window-shade, and banner painter. He moved to the home of his nephew Harry Hartwell in the neighboring town of Auburn about one year before his death at the age of 86.

Hartwell’s painting style is sometimes difficult to distinguish from that of Prior and Hamblin. All three artists painted in the flat style “without shade or shadow” advertised by Prior, but Hartwell’s portraits tend to be the most schematic and abstracted, perhaps because of his experience as a sign painter. Most of the subjects in portraits that can be confidently attributed to Hartwell are in three-quarter view and show heavy outlining, two-toned lips, and smooth areas in varying shades on the cheeks, noses, and under the brows to suggest modeling. Several of the portraits also feature roses painted in the particular manner seen in this portrait.

Bird of Paradise Quilt Top
Artist unidentified
Vicinity of Albany, New York
1858–1863
Cotton, wool, silk, and ink with silk embroidery
84 1/2 x 69 5/8 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of the trustees, 1979.7.1
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Appliquéd quilts are embellished with elements cut from one fabric and stitched to a primary fabric support. While the appliqués may be purely decorative, they also provide an opportunity for the quiltmaker to encode symbolic content into the textile. Based upon the central blocks that feature appliqués of paired animals, nesting birds, flowering urns, and other symbols associated with couples and fertility, the Bird of Paradise Quilt Top may have been made for an impending marriage. Inconsistent with this format are the two side-by-side blocks at the top of the quilt: One has a doll-like figure of a girl; the other seems empty, with only floral appliqués.

This quilt top descended with a number of paper templates that were used to cut the appliqués. These include a pattern for a male figure that does not appear on the quilt top. The newspapers from which these templates were cut are dated 1858 to 1863, therefore encompassing the years of the Civil War. It is tempting to speculate that the quilt was started in anticipation of a wedding that never took place due to the war, and for that reason the top was never quilted and completed.

Masonic Plate in the Form of a Royal Arch Tracing Board
Artist unidentified
Probably Natick, Massachusetts
1899
Wood with printed and painted paper
18 3/4 x 31 5/8 x 15/16 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of the Hirschhorn Foundation, 1997.6.4
Photo by David Stansbury

The origins of Freemasonry remain obscure. The secret society traces its roots to Solomon’s Temple, but more likely it arose out of the practices of medieval stonemasons’ guilds. Modern Freemasonry dates back to seventeenth-century England and was well established in North America by the time of the American Revolution. Indeed, during the new republic’s first fifty years, Masonic symbolism seemed to permeate American culture almost as Christian imagery permeated the art of the Middle Ages.

Following a period of decline during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, American Freemasonry began to regain its popularity after the Civil War. Freemasons and the members of their families incorporated Masonic motifs into a wide variety of decorative and household objects—woodcarvings, pottery, furniture, quilts. These are characterized by a more Victorian and personal interpretation than earlier Masonic objects, which tended to be formal and adhere strictly to neoclassical tradition.

The role of memory and mnemonic devices is central to an understanding of Freemasonry. Since Masonic teaching is intended for initiates, Masons use emblematic devices and coded language to convey esoteric messages and commit them to memory. Master’s charts—also called “carpets” or “tracing boards,” whether painted or printed—illustrate Masonic precepts through complex symbolic displays. Although this plaque is related in content to the tracing boards of Royal Arch Masonry, one of several symbolic systems within Freemasonry, it seems unlikely that it was used in formal ceremonies. Rather, it appears to have been intended for display in the home of a Freemason as a sign of prestige and pride.

The biblical accounts of the building of Solomon’s Temple inspire much Masonic ritual and imagery. The arch that dominates this handsome plaque is a reference to the Temple and is an emblem of Royal Arch Masonry. In the upper right, the artist has included a Tau Cross, or Cross of St. Anthony, which is composed of three Ts and is a symbol of Deity. When enclosed in a triangle and circle, as here, it is recognized as the badge of Royal Arch Masonry. The series of letters that surround the compass in the arch’s keystone is a mnemonic device associated with Royal Arch Masonry’s Mark Master degree. The ascending letters on the ladder stand for “faith,” “hope,” and “charity.”

This plaque is a tour de force of technique and design. The unidentified artist used a variety of applied wood chips, veneers, and carved elements, combined with printed and painted paper, to create a remarkably well-balanced composition that dazzles the eye. Decorative devices share the plaque’s space harmoniously with Masonic imagery. The influence of quilt motifs, especially late-nineteenth-century Crazy or show quilts, and perhaps of game boards, is apparent. The center door seems to be at the end of a receding hallway, which in reality is an entirely flat surface. The door opens to reveal a small drawing of two men.

The object contains a hint of its maker’s identity. The year “1899” is inscribed on the back of the plaque, and is accompanied by an advertisement for J.M. Forbush & Co., an insurance agency that operated in Natick, Massachusetts, from about 1882 to 1905. Interestingly, there was a local Mason named James M. Forbush who entered Natick’s Meridian Lodge in 1871 but withdrew in 1894.

The Ascension of Simón Bolívar on Mount Jamaica
Everald Brown (1917–2002)
Jamaica
1983
Oil on canvas
20 1/2 x 37 1/2 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Maurice C. and Patricia L. Thompson, 2003.20.8
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Venezuelan Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) was one of South America’s greatest leaders. Living a life dedicated to Latin American unity and independence from Spain, Bolívar was known as “El Libertador” because of his military victories over the Spaniards in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama.

Jamaican artist Everald Brown painted this rich symbolic portrait of the freedom fighter perched atop a mountain on the lush island of Jamaica, which occupies the center of the composition. The fertile island is crested by two embracing birds framed by a white arm and black arm holding out to each other rose bouquets as offerings of hope for freedom, equality, and liberation. Bolívar was in exile in Jamaica in 1814–1815 after successfully defeating Spanish forces in Colombia. He is shown straddling the small country and is surrounded by the natural riches of the island, holding a chili pepper in one hand, a coconut in the other. A cock is crowing into the general’s ear; the message the rooster delivers (of liberation? of freedom?) travels through Bolívar’s head to the right of the painting in the shape of  a yellow cloud-like form that lands on another land mass, the west coast of Africa, at the time a region of colonized countries and oppression. Africa is anthropomorphized, depicted as a mass of people in huts, while Jamaica is full of lush foliage and native plants with a few figures hiding in the landscape.

Saint John the Evangelist
John Perates (1895–1970)
Portland, Maine
1938–1970
Paint and varnish on wood
49 1/4 x 27 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin C. Braman, 1983.12.1
Photo by John Parnell

John W. Perates was born into a furniture-making family in Amphikleia, Greece, and learned to carve from his grandfather. After immigrating to Portland, Maine, in 1913, Perates found work with a manufacturer of handmade furniture and eventually established his own firm to produce furniture in the Colonial Revival style that was popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. When business was slow, Perates, an intensely religious man, read his Bible or carved ecclesiastical furniture and icons for the local Greek Orthodox church in a vigorous, idiosyncratic style. The church found Perates’s contributions to be too unusual, however, and stored the massive works in its basement, where folk art enthusiasts discovered them after Perates’s death in 1970. Portland’s Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church now contains a Last Supper and a bishop’s throne carved by Perates.

Perates’s carvings recall the Byzantine style of the artist’s native Greece, which stresses transcendental elongated figures, rich color, gold embellishments, and dramatic architectural framing. Perates specifically followed traditional dictates for the portrayal of holy personages: he labeled each saint with a name, depicted him with traditional symbols, and—most important—showed him in the frontal view that emphasizes eternality and direct engagement with the viewer. By isolating the evangelists in the moment of writing their gospels, Perates dramatized the immediacy of religious experience. Beneath the all-seeing eye of God, Saint John the Evangelist, holding a quill pen, points to the words that begin his gospel. The eagle, John’s customary symbol, arrives from heavenly heights to alight on the gospel. Similarly, in another work in the museum’s collection, Saint Matthew the Evangelist, pen in hand, points to his symbol, the angel who has directed him to write his account. The angel in turn points to the all-seeing eye of God, divine source of all inspiration. Unearthly skin colors—pale blue and green—and elaborate frames carved with non-figurative Byzantine motifs further separate these saints from mundane human existence.

New Jerusalem
Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900–1980)
New Orleans, Louisiana
c. 1957–1974
Acrylic and/or tempera on metal lid
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Bliss Carnochan in honor of Gerard C. Wertkin, American Folk Art Museum director (1991–2004), 2004.7.1
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

As a devout Baptist, Sister Gertrude Morgan had many twists and turns in life, often realized following religious visions. While in her 30s she had her first divine experience. Believing God told her to devote herself to preaching his word, she left her home in Alabama, traveled to Georgia, and in 1939 arrived in New Orleans. There she pursued a life as a street preacher and missionary, often accompanying her public speeches with singing and music. Perhaps the most powerful holy command came in 1957, when God’s message didn’t tell her what to do but told her who she was—the Bride of Christ. From that time forward this deeply spiritual woman wore all-white attire, befitting a new bride, and lived in a similarly monochromatic environment. This was about the time when Morgan also started to paint.

Sister Morgan’s visions reflect a life full of personal experimentation and an adventurous spirit in spite of the realities of twentieth-century America, a world consumed by segregation, prejudice, and oppression. Such an environment did not necessarily invite—much less allow—endless choices and opportunities for women of color.

This work is painted on a recycled lid from a metal container, possibly an industrial-size paint pot. Dominating the composition is a portrait of the artist clad in white attire sitting in a chair, holding a bouquet of red flowers. Next to Morgan is her symbolic groom, Jesus, standing frontally looking straight out at the viewer and tenderly embracing his bride.

Memories of the Veteran
Nick Quijano Torres (b. 1953)
Old San Juan, Puerto Rico
1984
Lacquered gouache on paper
12 1/4 x 12 1/4 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Dorothy and Leo Rabkin, 1984.2.1

The mixing of patterns and the blending of races comes together in this domestic scene to illustrate Nick Quijano Torres’s personal experience of Puerto Rico as a diverse, vibrant, and creolized culture. The rhythm and sensuality of Torres’s homeland is illuminated in this small, innocent rendering of a family portrait. Made with gouache, it shows the artist’s grandmother sitting in between the artist as a young boy and his sister. Above them and looking down over them is a symbolic rendering of Uncle Juan, an army veteran. The three sitters look out at the viewer from a highly baroque decorated interior.

Torres aims in his artwork to depict the story of the mixed-race culture of Puerto Rico. Inspired to do so after seeing a Puerto Rican art exhibition that expressly celebrated, in his words, “high society, the Anglo experience,” Torres decided to “paint what he knew,” and what was not depicted at other art venues. The confluence of cultures and races is echoed in the interaction of design; a flowery wallpaper, striped carpet, and doily-rich couch seem to symbolize the interface between cultures.

Our Lady Bread
Louis Monza (1897–1984)
New York City
1946
Oil on canvas
53 x 42 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Heidi Monza, 1986.18.1
Photo by Gavin Ashworth

Louis Monza emigrated from Italy to the U.S. at age 16, leaving an apprenticeship with a woodcarver. Once in the States, Monza worked on the railroad, traveling widely through America and Mexico, served in the U.S. Army during World War I, and settled in New York City by 1919. His cultural and social experiences in Mexico as well, as his military experiences in the army, formed in Monza a life-long pacifism. Relentlessly concerned with the common man and working class, he discovered a wealth of subject matter in the social and political circumstances of his time.

In Our Daily Bread, Monza paints a protest piece about hunger; the somewhat ethereal woman, tall and garbed white , is distributing bread to the masses of white people at her feet. Clearly influenced by mid-twentieth-century Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera, Jesse Orozco, and Siqueiros, Monza used aggressive paint strokes, a high-pitched palette of vibrant colors, and paisley-like forms to conjure an agitated, emotionally rich sky. The receding background of mountains and cities echoes the bread loaves in the feminine savior’s basket. Much of the canvas has a devastated feeling (a tornado seems to be forming in the background), but the main figure, with wind swept hair, flowing transparent gown, and solemn gaze, transcends this environment much like a classical statue from another world.