Folk Art

C

Swiss and German Folk Art

Ontario received many Empire Loyalists at the time of the Revolution, and they were soon followed by Swiss and German immigrants, mostly members of Amish, Mennonite, and other austere sects. Some came from Pennsylvania, but others came directly from Europe. In either case, they kept their own carefully circumscribed cultures intact, continuing and developing the colorful creation of frakturs of all types—birth and wedding certificates, religious texts, and merit awards—which were hardly known to the outside world until recently. They also kept alive a vigorous needlework tradition, including quilting and crocheting.

D

Other European Folk Art

Like the western U.S., the Prairie provinces of Canada were settled late. They attracted not only Anglo-Canadians but also a wide variety of peoples from central and eastern Europe: Russian Doukhobors in Saskatchewan and Ukrainians throughout the Prairie provinces. Among these 20th-century pioneers a sprightly painting tradition developed, some of it depicting memories of earlier times in Europe, but far more often depicting the vast prairies and pioneer life. These paintings, naive and explicit, have a direct and sometimes powerful impact.

Derived from many ethnic groups and extending over three centuries, Canadian folk art is varied and handsome. The collection and exhibition of folk art has only recently come into its own in Canada, and it is likely that much Canadian folk art remains to be discovered.

III

U.S. Folk Art

Folk art created by settlers in the U.S. distinctly reflects the cultures of at least eight European countries—England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Moravia, Norway, Sweden, and Spain—and of many nations on the African continent (see American Art and Architecture).

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A

English Influences

Although the history of English and Scottish folklore collecting dates from Samuel Pepys in the 17th century, and folklore was vigorously collected throughout the 19th century, almost no attention was paid to British folk art until recently. As a result, few collections of folk art are available in Great Britain with which to make comparisons to American colonial folk art. Such items as trade signs—both two-dimensional paintings and polychromed carvings—were a commonplace in Great Britain in the 17th century and were well established in the American colonies by the 18th century. The English tobacco-shop “black boys” are known to have influenced the early tobacco trade signs in America. Figureheads were a commonplace in Europe, but the predominance of British shipping in American ports unquestionably influenced U.S. wood sculptors who made stern-board carvings and figureheads. By the 19th century, American and British ship carvings were sometimes indistinguishable except for the figureheads depicting national heroes, and the American tendency toward greater simplicity.

British sources are easily recognizable in household folk art. Stenciling and an occasional fully painted wall were known in rural England, and the women’s carved wooden busks (corset stays) were the undoubted precursors of American scrimshaw busks of the great days of whaling. Carved buttermolds and some carving on other household utensils were part of the British tradition, but such carvings were better known on the Continent. British women coming to America brought needlework techniques that influenced their quilting, knitting, and crewel work. The rash of memorial pieces, both in needlework and watercolor, that sprang up after the death of George Washington in 1799 utilized motifs—the urn, the weeping willow, the church, and the mourning family—that had already been popular in Great Britain for some time. From the evidence currently available, the British seem not to have had a strong folk tradition of either portrait or genre painting; their influence was primarily in woodcarving and needlecrafts.

B

Dutch Influences

The Dutch in the upper Hudson Valley brought with them the enthusiasm for painting that had made 17th-century Dutch art one of the cultural achievements of the age.

In the first half of the 18th century merchant families happily patronized provincial painters of Dutch and English origin for portraits. The names of the 150 or so sitters for these portraits have been known for many years, but the names of the artists are only just now beginning to surface: They include John Heaton, Nehemiah Partridge, and Pieter Vanderlyn, among others as yet unidentified. In many cases the poses and the decorative elements are borrowed directly from English mezzotints of the works of court painters of the previous century. The result, however, is anything but courtly: The portraits have a blunt directness about the faces, a joy in bright colors, a woodenness of the figures that mark them as the work of painters operating outside the fine-arts tradition.

Presumably, some of these same painters turned out the religious paintings, based on woodcuts in Dutch family Bibles, that were noted by several 18th-century visitors to the Albany region. Today, 38 such paintings have come to light, and for about half of these, the source is known.

The contribution of the Dutch to American folk art lay primarily in their enthusiasm for painting and their encouragement of colonial artists.

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