{"person":[{"sourceId":{"label":"Source ID","value":"842"},"lastName":{"label":"Last Name","value":"Hirshfield"},"endDate":{"label":"Death Date","value":"1946"},"displayName":{"label":"Name","value":"Morris Hirshfield"},"objects":{"label":"Objects","value":[{"objectTitle":"The Artist and His Model","objectNumber":"2002.23.1","objectID":"2681"},{"objectTitle":"Mother Cat with Kittens","objectNumber":"1998.5.1","objectID":"2406"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled (\u201cView\u201d)","objectNumber":"2025.14.30","objectID":"9273"},{"objectTitle":"Cat and Kittens on the Carpet","objectNumber":"2023.13.5","objectID":"8828"},{"objectTitle":"Zebra Family","objectNumber":"2023.13.1","objectID":"8824"},{"objectTitle":"Girl with Flowered Dress","objectNumber":"2006.3.1","objectID":"3432"},{"objectTitle":"Christmas Tree and Angels","objectNumber":"2023.13.3","objectID":"8826"},{"objectTitle":"Nude with Cupids","objectNumber":"2023.13.2","objectID":"8825"},{"objectTitle":"Harp Girl","objectNumber":"2023.13.4","objectID":"8827"}]},"geographyDied":{"label":"Died","value":["New York","",""]},"biography":{"label":"Biography","value":"Morris Hirshfield\u2019s earliest works are painted over reproductions of artwork taken off the walls of his Brooklyn apartment. Among them, <em>Beach Girl<\/em>\u2014the first of his stiffly posed \u201cdream girls\u201d\u2014would yield the derisive nickname \u201cmaster of the two left feet.\u201d Despite criticism, Hirshfield persevered, painting landscapes, biblical scenes, and especially animals. These curvy felines, zebras with forlorn expressions, and lions with thickly painted manes all gaze out at the viewer from densely decorated canvases.Before he committed himself to painting at the age of sixty-five, Hirshfield worked in New York\u2019s garment industry, establishing himself as a purveyor of women\u2019s shoes with the E. Z. Walk Manufacturing Company, which he founded with his brother. In the art collector Sidney Janis\u2019s 1942 book <em>They Taught Themselves: American Primitive Painters of the 20th Century<\/em>, Hirshfield is quoted: \u201cEven in my young days I exhibited artistic tendencies\u2014not in painting\u2014but in woodcarving, for at the tender age of 12 I aroused our little town by producing for myself a unique noise-maker to be used in the Jewish Purim festivals at the synagogue.\u201dBorn in 1872 in a small Polish town near the German border, Hirshfield moved to the United States at age eighteen, part of a large wave of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe. In New York, he found work making women\u2019s coats. After his retirement in 1937, when he returned to his childhood passion for art, he paid close attention to the details of clothing, surrounding his nudes with lavish draperies and fabric. He also used an approach to painting similar to that for garment making, tracing preparatory drawings as if they were sewing patterns.<em>Angora Cat<\/em> caught Janis\u2019s curiosity while he was perusing art at Hudson Walker Gallery. As he recalled in <em>They Taught Themselves<\/em>, \u201cIn the center of this rather square canvas, two round eyes, luminously gleaming in the darkness, were returning my stare! . . . They belonged to a strangely compelling creature which, sitting possessively upon a remarkable couch, immediately took possession of me.\u201d This work was exhibited in the 1939 exhibition <em>Contemporary Unknown American Painters<\/em> curated by Janis at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Hirshfield received a solo show in 1943, three years before he died. In 2022, the American Folk Art Museum opened <em>Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered<\/em>, the most comprehensive exhibition of his work to date, featuring forty-two of his paintings\u2014more than half of his output.Allison C. Meier, 2025Text written as part of \u201cRethinking Biography,\u201d an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)."},"geographyActive":{"label":"Active","value":["New York","",""]},"geographyBorn":{"label":"Born","value":["New York","",""]},"beginDate":{"label":"Birth Date","value":"1872"},"firstName":{"label":"First Name","value":"Morris"},"primaryMedia":{"value":"https://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/2736/full"},"names":{"label":"Names","value":"Morris Hirshfield"},"displayDate":{"label":"Date","value":"(1872\u20131946)"},"id":{"label":"Id","value":"151067"}}]}