An Old Man Had Come out of One of the Houses, from "Not Honorably Discharged"

1904

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Dominant colour

An Old Man Had Come out of One of the Houses, from "Not Honorably Discharged" is a 1904 by William Leroy Jacobs, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: William Leroy Jacobs
When & what style?: 1904
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

This painting shows an old man in a black coat standing outside a house. He's the main focus of the scene. The old man is a soldier, and his story is part of a larger narrative, inspired by everyday life in America at the time, which was published in a magazine called Collier's. The artist created this image to illustrate a short story by Alice French, which gives it a unique context. Check out the work of William Leroy Jacobs.

The story of this work

Overview

William Leroy Jacobs created this image for a short story by Alice French (writing under the pen name Octave Thanet), “Not Honorably Discharged,” published in Collier’s Fiction Number for May 14, 1904. Magazines like Collier’s offered new opportunities and a ready source of income for emerging and lesser-known writers and artists. In his depiction of this story inspired by contemporary life, Jacobs focused on the protagonist, an older soldier whose black coat creates a dark silhouette in the snowy landscape, highlighting both his respectability and his isolation from the other characters in…

Read the full account in the museum source.