At first glance, Horace Pippin’s Holy Mountain paintings appear to be idyllic scenes of harmony in Paradise. But closer inspection reveals dark details of war and racial violence in the shadowy forest.
Holy Mountain III (1945) by Horace Pippin
Horace Pippin had left school at age 14 to help support his family, and was a laborer in a New Jersey iron foundry when he enlisted in World War I.
He was sent to France to join the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment, a unit that became renowned as the Harlem Hellfighters. A month before the war’s end, a German sniper’s bullet tore through his right shoulder, permanently disabling him.
Haunted by the horrors he had seen and unable to perform manual work, after returning home Pippin supplemented his military pension by delivering laundry and other odd jobs.
As therapy he began drawing with charcoal on discarded cigar boxes, then burned nostalgic scenes onto wood panels with a heated poker.
He turned to oil painting in 1928, laboriously placing color on the canvas by holding a fine brush in his right hand and guiding the wrist with his left.
The End of the War – Starting Home (c. 1930) by Horace Pippin
Pippin began displaying his art in local businesses, and in 1937 he entered his paintings in a local art show. The response was warm, and his work was exhibited and collected throughout the country. While his focus was initially on nostalgic scenes of hunting, farming, and family rituals, he also depicted historical and biblical events, his memories of war, and still lifes.
The Getaway (1939) by Horace Pippin
By the mid-1940’s, bitterness increasingly infused Pippin’s works.
Disillusioned by racism, segregation, and war, he was drawn to the work of Edward Hicks, a Quaker minister who painted dozens of interpretations of Isaiah’s biblical prophecy of world peace and harmony in nature.
Peaceable Kingdom (c 1830-32) by Edward Hicks
Pippin’s Holy Mountain I (1944), II (1944) and III (1945) are his own visions of this idyllic scene.
Each depicts a tranquil gathering.
A shepherd stands watch as lions, wolves, and sheep nestle together. Straw dangles from a lion’s mouth, and bright green and red cockatrices — deadly mythical creatures with the head of a rooster and the tail of a snake — sit placidly on their perches. Children play in the grass, untouched by the fierce beasts that surround them.
But in contrast to Hicks’s winsome fantasies, the Holy Mountain series includes visions of surreal menace.
Beyond the peaceful foreground looms a dark forest, and the trees conceal nightmarish destruction. Tanks, soldiers, and white grave markers emerge through the gloom. The dozens of red wildflowers in Holy Mountain III are poppies, the traditional emblem of the World War I dead.
Bombs tumble from planes, a battle rages, and, in two of the works, a lynching victim hangs from a tree.
Holy Mountain III (detail)
Even the dates on these paintings are dark reminders of war. The inscription on Holy Mountain I (June 6, 1944) refers to D-Day. Holy Mountain II commemorates Pearl Harbor Day, and August 9, 1945, on Holy Mountain III, marks the bombing of Nagasaki.
Holy Mountain II (1944) by Horace Pippin
Of Holy Mountain II, Pippin wrote, “Seeing the world as it is to-day caused me to paint this picture… If you will notice on the left hand corner of the picture you will see the struggle that we went through in 1917 and 1918, and further to the extreme left you will see what they did and are still doing in the South.” If contemporary reviewers noticed the limp figure dangling from the branch in the forest, none mentioned it.
Horace Pippin (1940) by Carl van Vechten
Source: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Pippin said,”‘Holy Mountain’ came to my mind because the whole world is in such trouble, and in reading the Bible (Isaiah 11:6) it says that there will be peace in the land. If a man knows nothing but hard times he will paint them, for he must be true to himself, but even that man may have a dream, an ideal — and ‘Holy Mountain’ is my answer to such dreaming.”1
Pippin continued to paint his dreams of “peace in the land”; when he died of a stroke in 1946 Holy Mountain IV sat unfinished in his studio.
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain:
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
(Isaiah 11:6-9.)
Holy Mountain I
Artist: Horace Pippin (1888–1946)
Date: 1944
Medium & Support: Oil on canvas
Size: 77.5 cm x 91.4 cm (30 1/2 in. x 36 in.)
Location: Private Collection
Holy Mountain II
Artist: Horace Pippin (1888–1946)
Date: 1944
Medium & Support: Oil on canvas
Size: 23 cm. x 30 cm. (9.06 in. x 11.81 in.)
Location: Private Collection
Holy Mountain III
Artist: Horace Pippin (1888–1946)
Date: 1945
Medium & Support: Oil on canvas
Size: 64.6 cm. × 76.8 cm. (25 1/4 in. × 30 1/4 in.)
Location: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC
Online Information:
Gehman, Geoff, “Art over Adversity: Horace Pippin Found his Talent in Therapy,” The Morning Call, February 20, 1994.
Horace Pippin’s notebooks and letters, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Monahan, Anne, “I Rember the Day Varry Well: Horace Pippin’s War.” Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 47, no. 3/4, 2008, pp. 16–23.
Horace Pippin Biography, National Gallery of Art.
Other Information / Sources:
Harold Pippin Explains His Holy Mountain.” Art Digest 19, no. 13 (April 1, 1945); 44.
Lewis, Audrey, ed., Horace Pippin – The Way I See It, Brandywine Museum of Art, 2015.
Pagano, Grace, Contemporary American Painting – The Encyclopaedia Britannica Collection, New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1945.
Stein, Judith E., I Tell My Heart – The Art of Horace Pippin, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1993.
Zilczer, Judith, A Not-So-Peaceable Kingdom: Horace Pippin’s “Holy Mountain,“Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 41, No. 1/4 (2001), pp. 18-33.
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