I really really love this painting, which I found in Maine but is definitely Haitian, c. 1940s I believe--just around the time that Haitian art emerged on the international art scene, in significant part due to the establishment of Le Centre d’Art by American artist DeWitt Peters, which supported and promoted the work of Haitian artists, including the phenomenal Hector Hyppolite. This painting is signed H. Besamours and portrays a crowd emerging from a funeral and out on the street, with four men carrying the cross-marked casket at center. I love the tiny altar boys in the foreground with priest looming large above/behind them, and then this wonderful cast of characters spilling from the doors of the church, with festive checkerboard patterned aisle between the pews just inside. For me it feels much more celebratory than somber, and as if music and dancing are just on the cusp of erupting. A wonderful painting to live with and look at everyday I think, very full of color and life.
35 1/4” t x 18 1/2” and in very good condition. Painted on cotton fabric. Sold in the gesso over carved wood frame I found it in, where its has lived a long time, wired on the back for hanging.
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