Sunny Side of the Street

1950

Philip Evergood

Painter, American, 1901 - 1973

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.”  
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On View

East Building Ground Level, Gallery 106-B

Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased 1951 from the artist by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1951

  • The Twenty-second Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1 April - 13 May 1951, no. 71, repro.

1959

  • Loan Exhibition. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art: A Benefit Exhibition in Honor of the Gallery's Centenary, Wildenstein, New York, 1959, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1975

  • 15 American Artists from the Corcoran: An Exhibition of American 20th C. Works from the Permanent Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, London Art Gallery, Ontario, 4 April - 6 May 1975, no. 6, repro.

1978

  • The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 26 April - 16 July 1978, unnumbered catalogue.

1980

  • La Pintura de los Estados Unidos de Museos de la Ciudad de Washington [Painting in the United States from Public Collections in Washington], Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1980-1981, no. 61, repro.

1981

  • Of Time and Place: American Figurative Art from the Corcoran Gallery, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Cincinnati Art Museum; San Diego Museum of Art; University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga; Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Des Moines Art Center; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL, 1981-1983, no. 63, repro.

1998

  • The Forty-Fifth Biennial: The Corcoran Collects, 1907–1998, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 17 July - 29 September 1998, unnumbered catalogue.

2004

  • Figuratively Speaking: The Human Form in American Art, 1770-1950, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 20 November 2004 - 23 May 2005, unpublished checklist.

2008

  • The American Evolution: A History through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1 March - 27 July 2008, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

1973

  • Phillips, Dorothy W. A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Vol. 2: Painters born from 1850 to 1910. Washington, 1973: 166-168, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: Philip Evergood / 50

Wikidata ID

Q46635824

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