Old Virginia Home
1864
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
1864
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Old Virginia Home is a 1864 oil by David Gilmour Blythe, a American Folk Art work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
This painting shows a crumbling old house with peeling paint and a leaning porch. A woman in a dark dress stands at the door, her face hard to read. The room inside glows with warm light. Blythe painted this in 1864, right after the Civil War. He lived in Pittsburgh but often painted scenes from the South. The woman might symbolize the hard times in Virginia after the war. See the woman’s quiet strength? Look up David Gilmour Blythe next.
Joseph Horatio Davis, Sewickley, PA, 1864; Mrs. Louis L. Browne (Martha G.), Sewickley, PA, 1913; estate of Louis Browne, 1973; Gailey Wilson and Son, Hickory, PA, 1973; Louise Wilson, Hickory, PA, 1977; David David Incorporated, Philadelphia, 1979; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1979.
Pittsburgh, Exhibition of Paintings and Statuary in Aid of the Pittsburg Fair Fund of the United States Sanitary Commission, Together with Paintings Contributed by the Artists of Pittsburgh and Others, for Sale for Benefit of the Fair , June 1–18, 1864, cat. 240. Mercantile Library Association of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Loan Exhibition , 1879, cat. 39. Washington, DC, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, The Works of David Gilmour Blythe , Oct. 17, 1980–Jan. 11, 1981, cat. 192; Rochester, NY, Memorial Art Gallery, Feb. 7, 1981–Apr. 5, 1981, Pittsburgh, Museum of Art,…
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), 194, fig. 46. Eric Foner, “The Civil War and the Story of American Freedom,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 21, pl. 5 (ill.). Yang Zhigang, ed., Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945 , exh. cat. (Shanghai Book and Painting Press, 2018), cat. 5.
Read the full account in the museum source.
David Gilmour Blythe (May 9, 1815 – May 15, 1865) was a self-taught American artist best known for paintings which satirically portrayed political and social situations.
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