Folk Art: American
Those seventeenth century American painters who made life size images of Puritans in the new world – the painters of Dr. Clarke, Elizabeth Eggington, Mr. and Mrs. Freake, the Gibbs Children, the painter Thomas Smith and others, were all, by definition, provincial painters or folk artists. They painted space in a linear orthographic manner and used shadow to lightly round forms rather than to create a forceful presence to the figure. These first portrait painters
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Folk Art: American
Those seventeenth century American painters who made life size images of Puritans in the new world – the painters of Dr. Clarke, Elizabeth Eggington, Mr. and Mrs. Freake, the Gibbs Children, the painter Thomas Smith and others, were all, by definition, provincial painters or folk artists. They painted space in a linear orthographic manner and used shadow to lightly round forms rather than to create a forceful presence to the figure. These first portrait painters in America took their stylistic cues from late Elizabethan portraiture traditions rather than from the Anglo-Dutch baroque traditions. American portraits of the seventeenth century set the stage for painters who followed in their footsteps. This is a tradition long established in England which persisted in the American colonies with artists who did not study abroad – even long after the American Revolution. Several anonymous provincial artists of the colonial and Federal period probably made their living as sign, fancy furniture, house and coach painters. Yet they seemed willing and able to make likenesses of sitters at the customer’s request. These were not generally urban artists, but painter/craftsmen who lived away from centers of dense population. The selected list below is by no means a complete survey of provincial painters in America. Indeed, there are many painters in this arena yet to be discovered, many others already well documented, and painters today who produce works that can be identified as part of this school of workmanship. So varied are provincial paintings that it is difficult to summarize the artistic methods and materials which might help to articulate or define these artist’s works. The very fact of diversity or lack of formal training makes it almost impossible to define the works produced by these artists as part of an “American” school that might be considered characteristic of the country. Untrained artists whose works show individual gifts are to be found in all nations world wide. However, if there is a single common denominator among these American painters it might be the essentially linear methods of their representation with the special attention that this encourages for the infilling of spaces and features with accurately observed local color. Skillfully handled, this method of painting has roots in the art of illumination in the middle ages, the representation of miniatures or the Art of Limning in 16th century England (Nicholas Hilliard, for example), and in the portrait paintings made in seventeenth century New England.
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