Provenance

Philip Evergood

American, 1901 - 1973

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The Free Spirit

Philip Evergood · c. 1930 · drypoint and etching in black on wove paper ·  Accession ID  2015.19.3372

About two dozen men, women, children, and babies, most with dark brown skin, stand, walk, or play hockey in a narrow street between rowhouses in this vertical painting. Games are drawn on the street in white chalk along most of its length. The person closest to us is a young man wearing a canary-yellow, double-breasted coat, who stands to our left of center at the bottom of the painting. His eyes are closed, and he holds a white cane in one hand. Behind him, a woman and the baby in her arms both have round lollipops. Next to them to our left, a boy wearing an orange sweater, brown pants, and a red crown stands facing away from us. Others play hockey on roller skates in the street. They wear shirts and pants in cranberry red, royal and sky blue, brown, green, golden yellow, and fluorescent orange. Their clothing and some facial features are outlined with black. To our left, a willowy woman with white-colored skin and a cloud of pale blond hair turns around to look at the street as she steps up onto the stairs in front of one house. Her tight, knee-length, sleeveless dress and pumps match the ash-white of her skin. Four children, one in a wheelchair, and one man sit and stand beyond her stoop and around the next one. Others look out the windows or walk along the sidewalks. A pair of white-uniformed paramedics carry a person on a stretcher to an ambulance farther along the street, to our right. The buildings meet at a point at about ten o’clock near the center of the composition. Many buildings on the right side of the street have fire escapes zigzagging down their facades. Spiky black antennas crowd the rooflines like lace against a sky streaked with topaz blue and parchment white. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “Philip Evergood 50.”  
Philip Evergood, Sunny Side of the Street, 1950, egg-oil varnish emulsion with marble dust and glass on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Anna E. Clark Fund, 1951), 2015.19.76

Sunny Side of the Street

Philip Evergood · 1950 · egg-oil varnish emulsion with marble dust and glass on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.19.76

Bibliography

1966

  • Lippard, Lucy R. The Graphic Work of Philip Evergood: Selected Drawings and Complete Prints. New York, 1966.