Civilian Landscape: An Ecocritical Examination of Horace Pippin's Depictions of War

Abstract

Horace Pippin (1888-1946) was a self-taught American artist who served in World War I. While he used art as a therapeutic outlet to process the horrors of war, his work also served as documentation of the environmental scars that were enacted upon the landscape. This paper will examine his war paintings through an ecocritical lens using Pippin’s style, technique, and subject to argue that the artist overlaid his personal war experiences onto his images of battlefields. The resulting perspective will connect the marks left on nature by military techniques with the artistic marks Pippin enacted on his canvases, one mirroring the other. This is specifically noted through the metaphorical and physical scar of trench warfare on the environment, which I argue Pippin emphasized in his painted scenes. I will then compliment this physical scarring with an examination of the therapeutic role painting played for Pippin in processing the emotional scars of war that continued to plague him well after the ceasefire. In this thesis, I will examine Pippin’s style, method, and subject matter, while considering both preliminary sketches and finished paintings. This study of Pippin’s work will culminate with the painting The Ending of the War, Starting Home completed in approximately 1933. It visually represents the moment of German surrender in dark, muted tones with stark brush strokes. The layering of paint and carved frame create a sculptural effect, and it is these marks fashioned by the layered brushwork that mirror the trench scars. Ultimately, this painting stands as one of the strongest examples of Pippin’s work to be considered with an ecocritical perspective.