The Cover
Details of the life of the American artist Lauren Ford (1891- sun. Smoke rises from the chimney of the summer kitchen.
1973) are as scarce as those in her paintings are abundant. Nearby is the town, with its churches, post office, and ceme¬
Only the broadest sketch is possible. Born in New York City tery, and, across the valley, the schoolhouse with its
nearly a hundred years ago, she studied at the Art Students' American flag. Beyond the river the quilted hills fade into pale
League. Between the two wars she lived in Europe, where she green and then into an eternity of bluish purple, like the
became greatly attracted to the Benedictines, studying landscape beyond the window of a 15th-century Florentine
Gregorian chant and the medieval art of manuscript illumina¬ portrait.
tion. In the late 1930s, she returned to the United States and But all this is but prologue to the real drama, which is about
settled in Bethlehem, Conn, where she specialized in Nativity to begin. Just down from center stage stands a horse and
scenes. She has been characterized as "a painter of whimsical buggy, tended by a small boy. Through the gate and just
Connecticut scenes, as painting in a combination of genre and
"
beyond walks the doctor, black bag in hand. And, at the exact,
American naive, and as an American Brueghel. The Country geometric center of the painting is the door to the farmhouse, a
Doctor (cover) is one of these Connecticut works. curtain that is about to rise on the drama to be played out
A garden of visual delights, the painting is a catalog of life at behind it. Perhaps it will be one of a life beginning or a life
the close of a summer day on the farm, an illuminated page in ending or of a life helped over a rough place. But, like the
the Book of Hours of a country doctor at the turn of the medieval morality play, the drama will center on three charac¬
century. Children spill across the canvas: riding on the hay¬ ters: the doctor, the patient, and the illness. And, when the
rack, climbing a fence, swinging in a hammock, hammering doctor exits and the curtain closes once again, life outside will
croquet balls, feeding chickens, watching pigs, fleeing from a go on much as shown, though with a little more joy or with a
goose (a girl) or from a goat (a boy), teasing the dog, worrying little more sorrow, one cannot guess.
the cat, and running to the outhouse. A lone adolescent girl The country doctor of a hundred years ago is today an
dreams on a hill above a lily pond. In the barnyard, a Noah's anachronism. On the other hand, perhaps not. For while the
ark of animals strut, cluck, quack, gobble, root, bark, or go to mode of transportation and the contents of the black bag have
be milked. Men and horses work silently, on the wagon, changed, the task has not. Nor has the drama finished.
among the corn shocks, riding the plow, going to milking. In \p=m-\M.Therese Southgate, MD
the garden cabbages are set out, and hollyhocks drowse in the
Lauren Ford (1891-1973), The Country Doctor, c 1930-1940, American. Oil
on canvas. 137.2 x 182.9 cm. Courtesy of the Canajoharie (NY) Library and
Art Gallery.
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