The Dining Room Lady199030 × 24"Oil on canvasGift of Harvie and Charles Abney2017.17.101540862723P9.201P9.2000.1Lorenzo ScottPaintingsCopyright for this work is under review.AtlantaAtlantaUnited StatesGeorgiaPaintingsAtlantaFormal rooms for dining were introduced during the nineteenth century and represented a family’s taste and attainment. So-called dining room pictures, still life paintings of overflowing fruit and flowers, became popular as symbols of plenty and material comfort. Lorenzo Scott’s The Dining Room Lady relies on that history of association for the qualities of refinement that he wishes to bestow upon the figure of this beautiful woman with golden eyes. He uses his conversance with early Western European art traditions to evoke queenly attributes: the neck ruff, jeweled headband, and gold-encrusted gown. His knowledge of Elizabethan, Renaissance, and Baroque art was not gleaned through formal university study but rather his own keen observations of art hanging in museums and pictured in books, and experimentation with available materials to learn to layer and glaze. Scott was born in West Point, Georgia. His family, devout Southern Baptists, moved to Atlanta when he was an infant. During the 1960s, he had the opportunity to live and work in New York City, where he frequently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and also enjoyed the work of sidewalk artists in Greenwich Village. When he returned to Atlanta around 1970, he supported himself as a construction worker and house painter, but he also began to paint, incorporating the religious and historical themes and visual and technical approaches that he so admired.
Stacy C. Hollander, “Lorenzo Scott,” exhibition brochure for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020).
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgPAINTINGoil on canvasObject information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgIf ever there was a folk artist interested in making contemporary objects that relate to the history of art, it is Lorenzo Scott. Enamored of Renaissance and baroque painting and sculpture, Scott renders his own interpretations of images from the past. While widely known for his religious paintings, the artist also has inspired by historic landscape paintings, genre scenes, and portraiture. The Dining Room Lady is a subject the artist frequently renders. Each version illustrates a serene African American woman with an ornate collar in a field of color. This frontal portrait is a bit unusual within this suboeuvre of Scott’s because of the clear landscape in the background. While the garb and tiara of the woman are apparently meant to take us back in time, her cropped Afro makes her appear quite modern.Scott has said that painting is so titled because “it is an old picture and it would look good in the dining room.” Scott lives in Atlanta, where he runs a gallery. Before devoting himself to making art full-time, he was a house painter. Visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and exposure to sidewalk artists in the area provided the impetus for his artmaking.P9.201P9.2000.119901990 2017 17 1 Formal rooms for dining were introduced during the nineteenth century and represented a family’s taste and attainment. So-called dining room pictures, still life paintings of overflowing fruit and flowers, became popular as symbols of plenty and material comfort. Lorenzo Scott’s The Dining Room Lady relies on that history of association for the qualities of refinement that he wishes to bestow upon the figure of this beautiful woman with golden eyes. He uses his conversance with early Western European art traditions to evoke queenly attributes: the neck ruff, jeweled headband, and gold-encrusted gown. His knowledge of Elizabethan, Renaissance, and Baroque art was not gleaned through formal university study but rather his own keen observations of art hanging in museums and pictured in books, and experimentation with available materials to learn to layer and glaze. Scott was born in West Point, Georgia. His family, devout Southern Baptists, moved to Atlanta when he was an infant. During the 1960s, he had the opportunity to live and work in New York City, where he frequently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and also enjoyed the work of sidewalk artists in Greenwich Village. When he returned to Atlanta around 1970, he supported himself as a construction worker and house painter, but he also began to paint, incorporating the religious and historical themes and visual and technical approaches that he so admired.
Stacy C. Hollander, “Lorenzo Scott,” exhibition brochure for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020).
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgPAINTINGoil on canvasObject information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgIf ever there was a folk artist interested in making contemporary objects that relate to the history of art, it is Lorenzo Scott. Enamored of Renaissance and baroque painting and sculpture, Scott renders his own interpretations of images from the past. While widely known for his religious paintings, the artist also has inspired by historic landscape paintings, genre scenes, and portraiture. The Dining Room Lady is a subject the artist frequently renders. Each version illustrates a serene African American woman with an ornate collar in a field of color. This frontal portrait is a bit unusual within this suboeuvre of Scott’s because of the clear landscape in the background. While the garb and tiara of the woman are apparently meant to take us back in time, her cropped Afro makes her appear quite modern.Scott has said that painting is so titled because “it is an old picture and it would look good in the dining room.” Scott lives in Atlanta, where he runs a gallery. Before devoting himself to making art full-time, he was a house painter. Visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and exposure to sidewalk artists in the area provided the impetus for his artmaking.