The air was still as water in the room at the auction house, but the garments on the clothesline in the painting were flapping in the wind. I could feel the breeze flowing through them in the painting, which was hanging just above my head on a wall in the corner of the room.
I was browsing the artwork during a preview on the day before the auction when I spotted it. I was instantly drawn to it because it had a southernness about it – clothes drying on lines strung between trees, enveloped by houses that didn’t look southern but could pass.
I got a little nostalgic because they reminded me of clotheslines from my childhood in Georgia. I can still remember the sheets especially – as white as untrampled snow – tossed by the wind or waiting pliantly for it to pass through. That’s much unlike the early photos I’ve seen of laundry on lines stretched between grim tenement houses in New York City.
At the auction house, the clotheslines were the main ingredient in an oil painting by a woman who had signed her name stylistically as Emma Brown. Googling her right there on the spot – as I do at all auctions when I see a painting I like but a name I do not recognize – I found no entry for an artist whose style matched hers. So I assumed that she was a local artist like the countless others in communities across the nation and the world who painted for the love of it.
I adored this painting and decided right then that I’d bid on it. I’ve picked up quite a few works by local artists and have been pleased with my purchases. I wanted to add Emma Brown to my cache.
After I got the painting home, I examined it more closely. On the back, someone – most likely the artist – had written these lines:
Clothes Line Exhibit
7/15/58
This was the provenance of the painting, a historical marker of its beginnings. It had been part of a clothesline art exhibit in the summer of 1958. I can only assume that the painting itself may have been created sometime earlier that year.
Clothesline art exhibits are displays of works by local artists in community shows held all over the country during the summer. I had never been to one that actually had prints held by clothespins on a line, so I had no personal experience of what they looked like. Coincidentally, though, I was at another auction a week later when I found a photo of a clothesline exhibit among one family’s historical papers and documents.
In the photo, a man stood with one hand in his pocket while a woman sat on the ground flipping through photos. On the clothesline behind the man were prints attached by clothespins, along with a sign with this message:
Work By
Shirley Tattersfield
–Staff–
Toledeo Art Museum
I assumed the artist was Shirley Tattersfield who was a staffer at the Toledo Art Museum in Ohio (the writer had misspelled Toledo). In my research, I found an artist of that name who was a famous muralist living in Philadelphia at the time. She was also known for her paintings and drawings.
Tattersfield was not the woman in the photo – the artist was described as a blonde who resembled Grace Kelly – and none of her bios mentioned that she had worked at a museum. So, the sign is an enigma.
Both the photo and the auction painting may be linked to the Rittenhouse Square Fine Arts Show in Philadelphia, which bills itself as the longest continuously running outdoor art show in the country.
The show began in June 1932, when a group of students known as the “Art Students League” descended on Rittenhouse Square to hang their works on clotheslines between trees. They had all studied under the renowned print-maker Earl Horter.
The exhibit became known as the “Clothesline Show,” and as it attracted more attention, professional artists and other students joined it, according to the show’s website. Artists from New Jersey and Delaware were also invited to participate. Here are some photos from its earlier exhibits.
It changed its name to the Rittenhouse Square Fine Arts Annual in 1976 to emphasize the quality of the artwork. Over the years, the clothesline had given way to finer displays of the artwork that befitted the new tenor of the exhibit.
Rittenhouse was not alone in its outdoor art exhibit, though. The Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester in New York has held one for nearly 60 years and calls it the “Clothesline Festival.” Guild Hall of East Hampton, NY, has held its “Clothesline Art Sale” of original works since 1946, Saugatuck, MI, has been inviting artists since 1953, and the Hudson (OH) Society of Artists since 1963. A 1966 newspaper article showed students at Kutztown State College in Pennsylvania (now Kutztown University) in an outside exhibit on campus.
A print-maker named Fannie Mennen started the “Plum Nelly (GA) Clothesline Art Show” in 1947 in her studio near Lookout Mountain.
Some shows still use clotheslines, as the folks in an alliance of artists in Decatur, GA, which supplies the clothespins. Fort Myers, FL, has its “Clothesline Quilt Show,” art in another form.
The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia is taking it into another direction, seeking submissions for an exhibit in March and April for artwork “inspired by the clothesline, hand washing and line drying, clothesline games and memories, and the environmental impact of taking in the wash.”
The clothesline also has been used symbolically to bring attention to domestic violence against women in the “Clothesline Project,” a visual display of shirts with stories and declarations from women.
At the auction, I was able to buy Emma Brown’s painting. Fortunately, no one else was interested in it.
