Running Before the Storm

At once melodramatic and comic, "Running Before the Storm" shows a sudden thunderstorm on an unidentified and quite possibly fictional farm by a lake.  Lightning crackles through an ominous sky, horses rear and buck nervously, laundry flaps wildly on the line, and two children struggle against the wind in hopes of getting home before the deluge.  Nineteenth-century painters often used storm scenes to dramatize the ineffectualness of humankind before the sublime, often overwhelming, power of nature.  But here, the solemnity of the message is undercut by the anecdote in the center foreground.  The puny farmer, improbably running with both arms extended, chases after his hat, assisted by his dog.     "Running Before the Storm" is a close copy of an engraving entitled "Thunderstorm" that appeared in Professor Herbert W. Morris's "Work-Days of God; or, Science and the Bible" (1877).  But, like many folk artists, the painter of this lively scene deviated expressively from his sources.  Just as he took the energy from romantic paintings of storms but minimized their deeper meaning, so in borrowing from the engraving, he seems to have been unaffected by the book's attempt to reconcile theology and science.  Rather, the print provided the compositional backdrop for the artist's love of story telling; his penchant for strong, decorative color; and for the sense of motion created by his short, repeating brushstrokes that convey the excitement of the storm.This text was adapted from Gerald W. R. Ward, et al, "American Folk" (Boston, MFA Publications, 2001).