Pearl BlauveltUntitled (In Bethleam, Palestine, Galalee, in New York City, New York), c. 1940s

Graphite and colored pencil on notebook paper

8.5 x 11 in

About the artist

Born 1893, Pennsylvania Died 1987, Scranton, PA A self-taught American artist of Dutch ancestry, Pearl Blauvelt’s entire body of work — a remarkable cache of drawings in graphite and colored pencil on ruled notebook paper — was discovered years after her death in a wooden box in her abandoned former home in northeastern Pennsylvania. Now regarded as an emblematic outsider artist, Blauvelt’s images of people strolling along country lanes, horse-drawn carriages, railways tracks, banknotes, houses, furniture, and women’s undergarments, which she often labeled with precision and care, serve as the imaginative recollections of a woman who lived a humble life on the margins of mainstream society. The artist’s determination to accurately capture the proportions, shapes, and surface textures of her varied subjects with only the drawing materials available in her limited surroundings evokes a somewhat child-like approach. At the same time Blauvelt’s pictures are also marked by unexpected sophistication as she exaggerates the details of certain subjects or accentuates the sculptural qualities of others. In creating her neatly organized compositions, she often assigns biblical references to mundane events, and refers to images of products reproduced in mid-century mail-order catalogs. Blauvelt’s Dutch ancestors settled in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City, and helped found the First Dutch Reformed Church in that region in the late 1600s. At some point in the early decades of the 20th century, the artist moved with her father to a house in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania that was heated by a coal stove and had a pump in the kitchen that supplied water from a well in the backyard. This is where she spent most of her adult life. In the 1970s, she was moved to a mental facility outside of Scranton where she continued to draw until her death in 1987.

About the artist

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