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Nancy Fitzpatrick-2.

watching the bustling actors and passersby in front of the historic old house, aware it would soon be torn down. At first she decided to paint the building for her own future pleasure, as a souvenir of her life on Macdougal Street. Later, one day when the people rehearsing there were waiting patiently for the doors to open, she added the human figures to her story. "They made pretty good, quiet models," she explains, "because they were so crowded there was little room for them to shift positions."

Another of her best known pictures, an oil depicting Hearn's department store, was painted by the same method, reminiscent of that by which Renoir saw and put down his great series of the cathedral of Rouen. First she was intrigued by the beautiful color of the window shades... "I couldn't resist them" she says. Then she noticed that the crowd was made up prominently of certain "permanents", persons who came back day after day, reassuming the same postures each time. There was a little nun, and a milk man, and street peddlers. These she painted in, after having become quite familiar with them all, and then, finally, she added the anonymous ones, the shoppers of Fourteenth Street.

A window is one of the few necessities to Miss Nancy, who at present overlooks Fourth Avenue, the postmen of one of our busiest post offices, the little stores selling old books, the great artery of inter-city freight traffic. She still paints primarily for the simple people whose concern is in bright simple color for their homes, and is as free as ever of the professional lingo and pride of the producers of museum pieces.....a cultured woman aware of the finest paintings and yet for all that free of "schools", expressing her very own personal self surely and colorfully.

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