 Hi everybody and welcome to today's Burns Takeout. My name is Amy Gillette. I'm a collections researcher and today I'm so happy to be joining you from my office space at the Beautiful Burns Foundation where I hope you'll be able to join us soon. Now today we're headed into room number 12 which Albert Burns had called the American Room. To look at this central painting right here let's zoom in a bit entitled Christ and the Woman of Samaria painted by Boris Pippin in the year 1940 as we can see from his signature. Now within this room we see it bookended by two other paintings here and here by Pippin various pieces of metalwork of wrought iron and as you know Burns did arrange all of his wall ensembles on on visual terms and I think it's wonderful the extent to which this Achilles scotch and down here looks so much like these silvery clouds that are drifting across this fuchsia sky the livid fuchsia sky in Pippin's image and then we've got other images by immigrant Jewel Pascine down here Ernest Lawson another self-taught artist like Pippin Albert Malty Marie Prendergast here is Albert Burns' very dear friend his self-portrait William Glackens over here on the same register as this little image of two sphinxes by Glacken's nine-year-old daughter Lena and so looking out clearly Burns has placed Pippin in this context of American artists with some amount of self-teaching going on here and so let's let's look a little bit closer at what that means so and and what Pippin was looking to accomplish with this image and so to look more at the image itself let's go on in here's here's our closer image and we again have these silver clouds in this absolutely glorious fuchsia sky that he's painted we've got Christ looking imperial regal in this purple cloak over his white robe encountering this woman of Samaria she's got a jug for the well over here I love that the signature the pavement the well the the Middle Eastern buildings in the background are the same silver and as much as from a distance the trees the leaves the grass look black we can see how richly in detail they're picked out here and so before we move on to look more at Pippin's style let's look more at what story this is depicting and it's an episode from chapter four actually in the gospel of John and so what it says is Christ had come to pass through Samaria and he's gone to a well and a woman of Samaria came to draw water Jesus said to her give me a drink his disciples had gone into the town to buy food the Samaritan woman said to him how can you a Jew ask me a Samaritan woman for a drink for Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans Jesus answered and sent her if you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you give me a drink you would have asked him and he would have given you living water the woman said to him sir you do not even have a bucket and the well is steep where can you get this living water are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks Jesus answered and said to her everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst the water I shall give will become in him an eternal spring a spring of water welling up to eternal life the woman said to him sir give me this water so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water and so you know this episode it says it's supposed to take place around noon but I think it's brilliant the way in which Pippin has depicted it as it looks like dawn or at twilight to electrify this moment between foreigners where this woman Samaritan who it says nothing is common in Jews has recognized in him the living God and the strong water from the well as a kind of prefiguration of baptism as a prerequisite according to Christian belief of entry into heaven and eternal life and so as as for the personal idiom in which Pippin has depicted it let's look a little bit more at the artist himself and here he is around the time he painted Christ in the Moment of Samaria at the Pyramid Club in north Philadelphia at 15th and Gerard a club for black professionals and he's talking with Albert Barnes now Pippin was a local artist he grew up nearby in Westchester and was a war hero he'd served on the front lines in France in World War One in an all-black regiment and like a lot of other American artists was exposed to French art modern art at that time and having gravely injured his right arm in combat he was able on pension to work on his art for some time thereafter and he was a self-taught artist he attracted the notice of Barnes displaying his work at the Carlin Gallery in Philadelphia in the late 1930s and ended up studying at the Barnes Foundation and something that had compelled Barnes about the work of Pippin was the extent to which here let's go back just a sec to look at Christ in the Moment of Samaria the extent to which his images did make use of old masters such as this version old master version of the same subject that you can find in gallery number 14 but put it in his own style his own perspective made it modern and and personal and something else that Barnes had appreciated about the work of Pippin was that self-taught aspect of it much like we're going to look actually at another picture on the same wall in gallery 14 here by Henri Rousseau a French self-taught artist early 1900s this image of scouts attacked by a tiger and I think that in a lot of ways it looks similar to Pippin where Rousseau is staged this crisp dramatic action against this almost curtain or screen of dense but wonderfully accurately rendered jungle foliage to make the the action scene up close personal and with what Barnes understood is this kind of authentic almost spiritual force to it that wasn't right out or academic or anything like that and so let's go back then to Pippin's Samaritan woman and another aspect that Barnes believed Pippin had brought to this was blending it together with African-American spiritual music in this case a him entitled Christ and the Woman at the Well and it's something that that Barnes had believed brought again this kind of authentic force as it were to the art of Pippin and I suppose we may notice as well that Pippin has made the figures look Middle Eastern and whether this is a means of representing historical accuracy because it's does after all take place in the Middle East or self-representation in a spiritual picture a lot like the way in which the same characters in the Italian picture look Italian you don't necessarily know the precise ingredients Pippin was bringing to this um that being said he was himself spiritual Pippin was and he certainly had a brilliantly expressive style that I think causes this encounter this again to use the word electric encounter between Christ and the Samaritan woman live reviewers I think throughout the 20th century and today um in in a way that comes alive for us and when we see it in the galleries and I do hope that you'll be able to come to the Barnes and see it soon and thanks so much for watching today that's it for today's Barnes takeout I'm Tom Collins new Bauer family executive director of the Barnes Foundation I hope you enjoyed Barnes takeout subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation