American Folk Art Watercolor Townscape, Main Street c.1958

Details

Description

Every inch of this small town is at work. Watercolor and gouache render a bustling main street in miniature: a … Read more Every inch of this small town is at work. Watercolor and gouache render a bustling main street in miniature: a grocer's red-striped awning, a flower cart doing brisk business, a couple leaning close on a park bench, a boy pushing a hand truck past a hotel doorway. Rooftop antennas and the cut of the coats and hats fix the moment precisely in the late 1950s. It is the kind of folk art painting built for looking twice, then a third time, as new characters and small dramas keep surfacing in the crowd.

Women in twentieth century folk art
Much of the twentieth century's finest folk art came from women working entirely outside the gallery system, painting for their own households, their neighbors, or a modest local market rather than posterity. That informality is part of what gives the genre its particular warmth, a directness trained, market-facing painting tends to smooth away. Streetscapes like this one were a favorite subject for these self-taught painters, who took evident pleasure in cataloguing an entire community at once, shopfronts and passersby and the small daily choreography of a main street. It remains some of the most collected and best-loved American folk art precisely for that reason.

Details
Medium Watercolor and gouache on paper
Signature Signed lower right, Dorothy Davis
Date 1958
Sight size 10 in H x 13 in W
Frame size 15 in H x 18 in W
Condition Excellent
Style American folk art, Americana, mid-century
Framed and ready to hang. A wonderful piece for a collector of American folk art, small town Americana, or narrative genre painting. See less