Museum of Fine Arts Boston

The rebirth of vitality

by Angel Xie

A world of the blending of white, black and grey is boring and hopeless, but an oil painting like that can be moving and vigorous. What a painting can show you is definitely more than just a landscape, an object or a character, because the artists always put their personal thoughts or feelings into it. We not only observe what’s in the picture, but also feel the spiritual power it gives you that hidden behind and usually some special details are the hints that we can use to go into the artist’s heart.

A painting called “night call” is about a winter night in the wood and there’s a doctor with his wagon on his way to see his patient. The painting has no other colors than grey, black and black. The background is a grey sky, the foreground is the ground with white snow, a little bit ice shown by some blue lines and some exposed rocks indicated by color black. These three colors naturally bring you to a dismal world.

The black bare trees are the main part of the picture. In contrast to the grey background and the white foreground, those black do attract your attention. Black, on the basis of hopelessness and sadness of grey and white, brings you to deadness and absolute disappointment. The painter carefully shows every branch so clearly that for one moment or two, you nearly think the twiggy trees are thousands of slim fingers and arms expanding from the roots. The painter perfectly depicts what trees in the winter look like and makes you scared yet thrilled, because through those “ugly” trees you can really feel the chill of the winter.

  The color blending of black, grey and white and the “ugly ”trees both give you an impression of winter, which is deathly stillness. There’s one more detail that amplifies the terrible coldness of winter and that makes me stunned by the painter’s skills. The sky has the color grey in the bottom but there’s a big amount of white oblique lines on it. Those lines not only cover the sky but also lots of other objects, as if everything will get destroyed seriously. They are used for the rendering of winds and snows from the sky. It demonstrates how terrible the weather is and the doctor in the picture looks really vulnerable and painstaking by that. However, they won’t bother you looking at the trees, including the branches.

The winter is terrible but there is still something alive and rising in vigor, which is what the artist wants to show about his own circumstance. The river, in this picture, is shown by color black as well, which is the opposite of color of the snow and ice.  By that, you will soon comprehend that the river isn’t frozen even though it’s terribly freezing. The only human character is the doctor. He is wearing thick coat and a hat. The winds and snows represented by those white lines have the same direction, which is coming toward him. You can see his back is bending a little bit but his head is still looking forward. You can’t see any emotion from his face because the painter paint his face all grey and only sketch the outline of it. But you can imagine that the doctor is willing to go forward because he doesn’t want to give his patient up. He is vulnerable but he is persistent and strong-minded. When you notice those facts, your feel the hope is reborn. The painting compels the changes of emotion. It’s an interesting thing and when you know that the actual theme is “the rebirth of vitality”, instead of “the terrible winter”. It makes you feel good when you realize that you comprehend the deeper meaning of it and usually people would like to relate it to their experience.

“The rebirth of vitality” happens a lot in people’s life whenever we meet a trouble or challenge. The artist of this painting was self-taught to become a great artist. He was the son of the slaves and in the World War I he lost his right arm. Either of these two troubles could be a vital obstacle on his way to succeed but he overcame both of them. He was misfortunate but he overcame all those challenges and makes his dream come true. Those amazing designs and details can prove that he did put a lot of effort into the “night call” and he had experienced a really painstaking and slow process until he finished this painting. After knowing the artist’s background, I think for the artist, Horace Pippin himself, the fulfillment of this amazing painting is a rebirth of hope for his own life.

If you think “night call” is as simple as it looks like, then you are wrong. The story inside Horace Pippin’s “night call” is as tortuous as his own experience. When you appreciate the “night call” carefully, you definitely want to cry twice One for the painting itself, and the other for the artist.