Horace Pippin was an American painter, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1888, who died there in 1946. A sniper's bullet nearly paralyzed his right arm in the First World War, and he taught himself to paint by steadying that hand with his left. He is remembered for a war picture that took him three years, a series on John Brown, and a small, furious painting called Mr. Prejudice.
He had no teacher, no art school and an arm that hung almost useless at his side.
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Pippin did not stumble into painting. After the war he lived on a disability pension of $22.50 a month, and in 1929 he began burning an outline into a wooden panel with a hot poker, holding the poker in his right hand and bracing that hand with his left. About a year later he moved to an easel. His first large canvas, The End of the War: Starting Home, took him three years and about 100 coats of paint.
Then comes the story every account repeats. In 1937 the illustrator N. C. Wyeth and the critic Christian Brinton spot a painting in the window of a shoe repair shop in West Chester and discover a genius. The record is messier. Wyeth was judging the Chester County Art Association annual that year, and Pippin had entered two paintings. Judith Stein's research suggests that Pippin had been making himself easy to find.
What You'll Discover
What happened in the shell hole.
How his left arm steadied the brush.
What he told a famous collector.
Who the woman at the hanging is.
What the axe is about to split.
Who the shepherd really is.