Pippin came to public attention in the 1930s as part of a widespread fascination with self-taught artists. By the next decade, he was the most successful Black artist working in the United States. While Victorian Interior I is sometimes described as a still life, he felt otherwise: "If you look carefully you’ll see that She’s left her knitting, and He’s left his pipe. They’ll be back any moment." The painting originally hung in the living room of Jane Kendall [Hamilton] Gingrich, an enthusiastic supporter of modern art, who frequently hosted Pippin in her Main Line Philadelphia home.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Victorian Interior I
Artist:Horace Pippin (American, West Chester, Pennsylvania 1888–1946 West Chester, Pennsylvania)
Date:1945
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:20 1/4 × 24 1/4 in. (51.4 × 61.6 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of Jane Kendall Gingrich, 1982
Object Number:1982.55.5
Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): H. PIPPIN. 1945. FEB
Jane Hamilton, later Jane Kendall Gingrich, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., New York, and New Jersey (by 1947–d. 1981; her bequest to MMA)
Philadelphia. Art Alliance. "Horace Pippin Memorial Exhibition," April 8–May 4, 1947, no. 42 (as "Victorian Interior," lent by Mrs. Jane Hamilton, Washington).
Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin," January 21–April 17, 1994, unnumbered cat. (fig. 114; as "Victorian Parlor" also known as "Victorian Interior I").
Art Institute of Chicago. "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin," April 30–July 10, 1994, unnumbered cat.
Cincinnati Art Museum. "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin," July 28–October 9, 1994, unnumbered cat.
Baltimore Museum of Art. "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin," October 26, 1994–January 1, 1995, unnumbered cat.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin," February 1–April 30, 1995, unnumbered cat.
New York. Studio Museum in Harlem. "Challenge of the Modern: African-American Artists 1925–1945," January 23–March 30, 2003, no. 103.
Chadds Ford, Penn. Brandywine River Museum. "Horace Pippin: The Way I See It," April 25–July 19, 2015, no. 53 (as "Victorian Parlor" [also known as "Victorian Interior I"]).
Selden Rodman. Horace Pippin: A Negro Painter in America. New York, 1947, pp. 16, 21, 86, no. 87, pl. 36, locates it in the collection of Mrs. John D. M. Hamilton, Paoli, Pennsylvania.
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan in Judith E. Stein. I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin. Exh. cat., Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. New York, 1993, p. 118, fig. 114.
Anne Monahan in Judith E. Stein. I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin. Exh. cat., Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. New York, 1993, p. 202.
Michael Kimmelman. "At the Met with Wayne Thiebaud: A Little Weirdness Can Help an Artist." New York Times (August 23, 1996), p. C25, ill.
Michael Kimmelman. Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre and Elsewhere. New York, 1998, p. 164, calls it "Victorian Parlor I".
Lowery Stokes Sims. Challenge of the Modern: African-American Artists 1925–1945. Exh. cat., Studio Museum in Harlem. Vol. 1, New York, 2003, pp. 43, 120, no. 103, ill. p. 55 (color).
Audrey Lewis inHorace Pippin: The Way I See It. Ed. Audrey Lewis. Exh. cat., Brandywine River Museum. Chadds Ford, Penn., 2015, pp. 74, 80, 83, 87 n. 32, p. 169, colorpl. 53.
Anne Monahan, Isabelle Duvernois, and Silvia A. Centeno. "'Working My Thought More Perfectly': Horace Pippin’s 'The Lady of the Lake'." Metropolitan Museum Journal 52 (2017), pp. 96, 105, 110.
Anne Monahan. Horace Pippin, American Modern. New Haven, 2020, pp. 190–92, 194–95, 199, 202, 218, 247 n. 3, figs. 111 (installed in Hamilton residence, ca. 1947), 115 (color).
"Behind the Scenes with Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway and Jane
Kendall Mason." Hemingway Review 40 (Fall 2020).
Horace Pippin (American, West Chester, Pennsylvania 1888–1946 West Chester, Pennsylvania)
ca. 1935–39
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