Description:


Indiana, Circa 1840
Folk Art Full-Length Portrait of a Girl in a Blue Dress Seated at a Piano
oil on canvas
unframed.

This wonderful piece of Indiana folk art features a girl wearing her Sunday-finest long blue dress with black lace trim, black patent leather shoes, long rolled banana curls set with ribbons, and all while seated beside her family's heirloom and upright house organ. Her right hand already rests on the keys as if she's ready to spin around on her stool and play something from memory for loved ones on a special occasion. Although we don't know the name or the background origin of the painter, we can guess that he/she was a 19th c. settler of European origin, someone who had learned the painter's craft informally (possibly as an apprentice to a more skilled painter), and someone who was helping revive, possibly from memory, elements from their own old-world artistic heritage and tradition. This wonderful example of 'primitive' colonial Americana comes from the heart of this country, and it goes hand in hand with other iconic elements of that tradition including quilting, embroidery, pottery, basket weaving, signage painting and toy making. By creating this painting for a middle class ‘hoosier' family in Indiana, this local artist was literally ‘pulling out all the stops' (a term stemming from organ playing) for this girl's family's heritage and future history.

  • Dimensions: 49 1/4 x 36 1/2 inches
  • Medium: oil on canvas

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February 10, 2024 10:00 AM CST
St. Louis, MO, US

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