Viewing page 53 of 151

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Chronology of P's Life & Work
Call Rodham Sterling
I.B Pippen. proof read


1888 - Horace Pippin was born at West Chester, Pennsylvania.
1891 - Moved with his parents and younger brother John to Goshen, New York.
1895 - At [[strikethrough]] the age of [[/strikethrough]] seven he [[/strikethrough]] P began [[strikethrough]] making [[/strikethrough]] drawing his first pictures with pencil and crayons. [[strikethrough]] His first pictures were sketches of articles he learned to spell in [[/strikethrough]] at the segregated one-room school house in Goshen.
1898 - Pippin answered an advertisement of an art-supply firm and received, "a box of crayon pencils of six different colors... a box of cold water paint and two brushes,"1 with which he drew pictures of religious subjects. The sketches were drawn on muslin squares, the edges of which he frayed to give them the appearance of lace doilies, which were to become a [[strikethrough]] persistent [[/strikethrough]] continuing symbol in Pippin's later work. 2 [[note]] direct P. quote only [[/note]]
1902 - The first attempt at portraiture pleased the sitter Mr. Gavin, Pippin's employer, who offered him instruction [[strikethrough]] in draughtsmanship [[/strikethrough]]. The lessons never materialized as Pippin had to attend to his sick mother.
1903 - He left school to work as a porter for seven years at the St. Elmo Hotel in Goshen to support his mother.
1911 - Pippin's mother died.
1912 - Pippin moved to Paterson, New Jersey and worked at the Fidelity Storage House crating pictures on moving vans. Here he came into contact with a variety of pictures, nothing the details and characteristics of the individual artists. 
1916 - He became an iron molder at the American Brakeshoe Company.
1917 - Enlisted in the Army and sent to France after training as an infantryman at Fort Dix, New Jersey and Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina.
1918 - Pippin, badly wounded, returned to the United States with memories of months in the trenches where he constantly wrote and sketched in his diary. A series of six pencil and crayon illustrations from one diary survives as Pippin's earlies works.  
1919 - When he was honorably discharged from the 369th Infantry, U.S.A., he had lost the use of his right arm. The French government awarded him the [[strikethrough]] French [[/strikethrough]] Croix de Guerre.
1920 - Pippin married Jennie Ora Featherstone Wade, a widow with a son, and returned to West Chester, Pennsylvania to live. To supplement his dependable yet modest disability pension, his wife took in laundry and he delivered it.