The self-taught artist Horace Pippin began painting as a means of therapy, hoping to regain the mobility of his right arm, which had been injured in World War I. He became one of the most celebrated African American artists of the mid-twentieth century, as critics acclaimed the power and authenticity of his “primitive” style. Cabin in the Cotton, the painting that brought him to the attention of the art world, displays Pippin’s vivid, saturated palette and feeling for intense pattern.
Living in Pennsylvania, Pippin may have seen cotton fields during visits to relatives in the South, but it is more likely that he drew on popular culture for inspiration. The way of life in the rural South enjoyed a great vogue in the 1930s, with the premiere of George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess in 1935 and the publication of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind in 1936. In particular, the painting’s composition recalls the opening and closing sequences of the 1932 film Cabin in the Cotton, starring Bette Davis. In that year, both Bing Crosby and Cab Calloway made recordings of a song titled “Cabin in the Cotton.”
In 1937 Christian Brinton, an influential art critic, and N. C. Wyeth, the famous illustrator, discovered Cabin in the Cotton in the window of a shoe-repair shop in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and convinced Pippin to begin exhibiting. Newspapers then widely reported that the actor Charles Laughton had purchased the painting, prompting other celebrities and art collectors, as well as museums, to acquire Pippin’s work, which assured his lasting fame.
Restricted gift in memory of Frances W. Pick from her children Thomas F. Pick and Mary P. Hines
Reference Number
1990.417
Extended information about this artwork
“Primitivist Pippin,” Time 35, 5 (January 29, 1940), 56.
Selden Rodman, Horace Pippin: A Negro Painter in America (Quadrangle Press, 1947), 13, 14, 82, pl. 6.
Arthur Miller, “Laughton, Art Lover,” Art Digest, 23, 10 (February 15, 1949), p, 9.
Selden Rodman and Carole Cleaver, Horace Pippin: The Artist as a Black American (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972), 68, 70, 73, 75.
Judith E. Stein, et al., "I Tell My Heart": The Art of Horace Pippin, exh. cat. (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in association with Universe Publishing, 1993), 8, 10, 40n, 147–48, 161, 187, 195, ill. fig. 155.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), 84, ill.
Kirsten P. Buick, “Portfolio,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 2 (1999), 194–195, no. 6.
Julie L. McGee, "Field, Boll, and Monument: Toward an Iconography of Cotton in African American Art," International Review of African American Art 19, 1 (2003), 38–39, ill. 46.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 97.
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017) p. 119.
West Chester, Pa., Art Centre, Art Association and School Board of West Chester, Chester County Art Association Sixth Annual Exhibition, May 23–Jun 6, 1937, cat. 20 (Upper Hallway).
West Chester, Pa., Community Center, Chester County Art Association and West Chester Community Center, Horace Pippin: Paintings and Burnt Wood Panels, Jun 8–Jul 5, 1937, cat. 2.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Masters of Popular Painting, Apr 27–Jul 24, 1938, cat. 167; traveled to Northampton, Ma., Smith College Museum of Art; Louisville, Ky., Louisville Art Association; Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, Dec 21, 1938–Jan 22, 1939; Kansas City, Mo., William Rockland Nelson Gallery of Art; Houston, Tex., Houston Museum of Fine Art; Los Angeles, Ca., Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art; San Francisco, Ca., San Francisco Museum of Art.
Philadelphia, Carlen Galleries, Paintings by Horace Pippin, Jan 19–Feb 18, 1940, cat. 2.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin, Jan 13–Apr, 10, 1994; traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago, Apr 28–Jul 10, 1994; Cincinnati Art Museum, Jul 28–Oct 9, 1994; Washington, DC, National Museum of American Art, Oct 27–Jan 22, 1995.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Collecting: African American Art in the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb 15–May 18, 2003, no cat.
Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Brandywine River Museum of Art, Horace Pippin: The Way I See It, Apr 25–Jul 19, 2015.
The artist, West Chester, Pa.; sold to Charles Laughton, Hollywood, Ca., in 1940, until at least 1947. Sold by Ulrike Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990.
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