Art Institute of ChicagoPublic domain

Cabin in the Cotton

Horace Pippin · c. 1931–37

Provenance

Ownership history

Horace Pippin (1888–1946), West Chester, PA; sold to Charles Laughton, Hollywood, CA, 1940, until at least 1947. With Ulrike Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, by 1990; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1990.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibitions

Exhibition history

West Chester, PA, Art Centre, Art Association and School Board of West Chester, Chester County Art Association Sixth Annual Exhibition, May 23–June 6, 1937, cat. 20 (Upper Hallway).
West Chester, PA, Community Center, Chester County Art Association and West Chester Community Center, Horace Pippin: Paintings and Burnt Wood Panels, June 8–July 5, 1937, cat. 2.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Masters of Popular Painting, Apr. 27–July 24, 1938, cat. 167; Northampton, MA, Smith College Museum of Art; Louisville, KY, Louisville Art Association; Cleveland, OH, Cleveland Museum of Art, Dec. 21, 1938–Jan. 22, 1939; Kansas City, MO, William Rockland Nelson Gallery of Art; Houston, TX, Houston Museum of Fine Art; Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art; San Francisco, CA, San Francisco Museum of Art.
Philadelphia, Carlen Galleries, Paintings by Horace Pippin, Jan. 19–Feb. 18, 1940, cat. 2.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin, Jan. 13–Apr. 10, 1994; Art Institute of Chicago, Apr. 28–July 10, 1994; Cincinnati Art Museum, July 28–Oct. 9, 1994; Washington, DC, National Museum of American Art, Oct. 27–Jan. 22, 1995.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Collecting: African American Art in the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 15–May 18, 2003, no cat.
Chadds Ford, PA, Brandywine River Museum of Art, Horace Pippin: The Way I See It, Apr. 25–July 19, 2015.
Atlanta, High Museum of Art, Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self–Taught Artist in America, Aug. 21–Dec. 11, 2021, cat. (ill. fig. 30); Chadds Ford, PA, Brandywine River Museum of Art, May 28–Sept. 5, 2022; Westmoreland Museum of Art, PA, Oct. 30, 2022–Feb. 5, 2023 (Atlanta only).
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Edges of Ailey, Sept. 25, 2024–Feb. 9, 2025, not in cat.

Literature

Published references

“Primitivist Pippin,” Time 35, 5 (January 29, 1940), 56.
Selden Rodman, Horace Pippin: A Negro Painter in America (Quadrangle Press, 1947), 13, 14, 82, pl. 6.
Arthur Miller, “Laughton, Art Lover,” Art Digest, 23, 10 (February 15, 1949), p, 9.
Selden Rodman and Carole Cleaver, Horace Pippin: The Artist as a Black American (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972), 68, 70, 73, 75.
Judith E. Stein, et al., "I Tell My Heart": The Art of Horace Pippin, exh. cat. (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in association with Universe Publishing, 1993), 8, 10, 40n, 147–48, 161, 187, 195, ill. fig. 155.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), 84, ill.
Kirsten P. Buick, “Portfolio,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 2 (1999), 194–195, no. 6.
Julie L. McGee, "Field, Boll, and Monument: Toward an Iconography of Cotton in African American Art," International Review of African American Art 19, 1 (2003), 38–39, ill. 46.
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), cat. 97.
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 119.
Anne Monahan, Horace Pippin, American Modern (Yale University Press, 2020), 38, 43, 53, 70 (ill. detail), 72, 74–85, 75 fig. 36 (ill.), 88, 90, 94, 98, 102, 105–107, 112–113, 118, 136, 177, 234n33.

Comparables