Window Shade

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

An oil painting painted directly onto a roller window shade. The painting depicts scenes of plantation and pastoral life in Louisiana in vignettes that run across the surface in horizontal bands. The shade is mostly, but not completely, retracted. The shade is shadowbox framed, with the canvas stapled and glued to the backing board along the top edge, and glued at the bottom edge. At the top of the painting a strip of blue depicts the sky. Below the sky are two horizontal rows of figures picking cotton, four people in each row, interspersed with trees. A grey house with a fence is depicted to the right of the figures. There is a slight gap, below which are another three rows of horizontal scenes. The top row begins with a green house at the left. A line of seven people are walking out of the house towards a white church at the right.

Explore Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture ↗