page_title: Horace Pippin
section_title: Artworks
hierarchical_section_title: Horace Pippin / Artworks
caption_attribution_description: English: Mr. Prejudice painted by Horace Pippin in 1943, depicting a personal view of race relations in the United States
context_page_description: Horace Pippin was a self-taught American artist who painted a range of themes, including scenes inspired by his service in World War I, landscapes, portraits, and biblical subjects. Some of his best-known works address the U.S.'s history of slavery and racial segregation. He was first Black artist to be the subject of a monograph, Selden Rodman's Horace Pippin, A Negro Painter in America, and the New York Times eulogized him as the "most important Negro painter" in American history. He is buried at Chestnut Grove Annex Cemetery in West Goshen Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania State historical Marker at 327 Gay Street, West Chester, Pennsylvania identifies his home at the time of his death and commemorates his accomplishments.
context_section_description: Pippin's oeuvre includes a variety of subjects and compositional strategies. He began in the 1920s by burning designs into wood panels--mostly snow scenes--and adding paint in one or two colors to highlight specific components of the image.
  
  His first oil painting, The Ending of the War, Starting Home, 1930-1933, depicts a scene informed by his experience at the Battle of Sechault, where he was shot. (It does not depict the official German surrender on November 11, 1918, which happened as he was recovering in a French hospital.) He painted World War I several times thereafter in the 1930s and once more in 1945. He also made the frame and decorated it with hand-carved war materiel, including German and French helmets and weapons. 
  Pippin painted several religious subjects, both those illustrating Bible passages and more visionary statements like his Holy Mountain series. He was a religious man, staying close to the church throughout his life by teaching Sunday school and singing in his church choir.
  Some of Pippin's most celebrated pictures include the three paintings of his Holy Mountain series. Reminiscent of the bucolic Peaceable Kingdom series by Quaker artist Edward Hicks, Pippin's work adds elements that contextualize the theme in his own time. Barely visible figures in the wooded backgrounds reveal forces that may precede or threaten the peace rendered in the foreground. In The Holy Mountain II and III, a brown silhouetted figure can be seen hanging among the trees, presumably a victim of lynching, which was a not uncommon atrocity in the segregated southern United States. Among the paintings, soldiers, airplanes, bombs, and grave markers are also visible in the forest. Pippin suggests that discord and harmony are never too far apart. He links concepts of destruction to those of peace again by signing each painting in the series with a significant date from WWI. The Holy Mountain I is marked with "June 6", dating to D-Day. "Dec 7" marks The Holy Mountain II, signifying the attack on Pearl Harbor. Lastly, The Holy Mountain III is dated "Aug 9", the day the United Stated dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. In the foreground, it has been noted that the shepherd figure, which Pippin added among the animals also seen in Hicks' works, bears a striking resemblance to the artist himself. Pippin's dealer Robert Carlen took credit for exposing Pippin to Hicks' series as he was a principle advocate of both self-taught artists.
  His Self-portrait of 1941 shows him seated at the easel. His painting of John Brown Going to his Hanging (1942) is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia is part of a trilogy on the subject of the abolitionist who is sometimes credited with igniting the Civil War.
  Mr. Prejudice, made at the request of an unidentified patron, is unique in Pippin's oeuvre for its experimental composition and symbolic program. The relatively small image--about the size of a magazine cover--sorts the figures by race, with an African-American group on the left and white group on the right. The lower register reveals an assortment of military types. Some read the figure at center left, a soldier outfitted in an anachronistic WWI uniform, as Pippin himself. The black figures face forward, towards the viewer, while the white figures face left, towards the African-American group. In the painting's upper register, a white man is seen with a hammer, presumably splitting the large, golden V that surrounds him and divides the figures below. Winston Churchill coined the slogan "V for Victory" in the Allied campaign to end WWII. The slogan was expanded by African-American groups into the "Double V" campaign, which elaborated on the hope for victory abroad to include victory over discrimination and racism at home. Larger figures are shown along the edges of the picture's upper register. On the left, a brown-skinned Statue of Liberty raises her torch, lighting the way to freedom. On the right, a broad figure dressed in red holds a noose in one hand, with his gaze directed at Lady Liberty. L
caption: Mr. Prejudice painted by Horace Pippin in 1943
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