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Horace Pippin

The Blue Tiger, 1933

oil on fabric

16 x 28 in.

Deacessioned American Paintings and Sculpture Department

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Horace Pippin was the most celebrated African American painter of his time.  He had a brief artistic career that lasted less than ten years.  Pippin was a self-taught painter whose subject matter concentrated on African American life.  He had a speedy rise to fame after enduring poverty, racism and a war injury.  A World War I combat veteran, Pippin struggled to overcome an injury to his right arm from a German sniper’s bullet.  One of his earliest paintings reflects his war experience.  He was first discovered by the Philadelphia collector Albert Barnes in 1947 at age 49.  The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City mounted a show of Pippin’s work and his paintings soon were purchased by museums and private collectors.  He died of stroke in 1946. Pippin painted 136 works, 60 are in museum collections, and several are lost.  About 70 are in private hands.

The Blue Tiger shows the tiger in confrontation with a black bear.  Since the blue tiger in the painting is actually white and confrontations between tigers and bears usually end without a either being the victor, the paintings brings to mind conflicts between races with often end in a battle without a solution.  The blue tiger is a symbol of the unattainable and the black bear is a classic symbol of the American wilderness.  Reaching the fame that many black artists may have found unattainable did not stop Pippin from rising quickly in the art world.

The frame that came with this painting was a high quality black frame that made reading of the black bear and other details of the work very difficult.  Research was done on Pippin’s original frames, and the black frame was replaced with a wood frame that is close to the type that the artist would have used.

References

Judith E. Stein. Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia with Universe Publishing, 1993. ISBN: 0876637853