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Lauren Ford

Epiphany at Bethlehem, Connecticut, about 1942

oil on canvas

20 x 24 ½ in.

Delavan Smith Fund

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Lauren Ford was born in New York City, the daughter of a writer and a hotel owner.  She was raised in New York, Connecticut and Brittany, France.  Ford learned to draw as a child and later studied at the Art Students League in New York and the Académie Colarossi in Paris.  She was a painter, etcher and illustrator of children’s books that contained Christian themes in modern settings.  Sometimes Ford would use her farm in Connecticut as the background for her paintings. 

Lauren Ford became a lay member of a religious community during a sojourn in France, where she studied medieval manuscripts.  Her interest in religious themes is reflected in the biblical subject matter of Epiphany at Bethlehem, Connecticut. Here Ford tells the story of the birth of Jesus using the contemporary setting of her New England farm near Bethlehem, Connecticut.  She told her god-daughter the reason for her choice of a contemporary locale for this biblical scene: “You will see landscapes that you know, roads that you have taken, and the Baby Jesus is born in the barn down the hill.  It is because He belongs to you and me.”

Reference

Robert Henkes. American Women Painters of the 1930s and 1940s: The Lives and Work of Ten Artists, Jefferson, NC: MacFarland and Company, 1991.  ISBN-13: 978-0899504742