Artist:
John W. McCoy
(American, 1910 - 1989)
Lafayette's Headquarters
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Date: 1946
Dimensions:
21 1/2 × 30 in. (54.6 × 76.2 cm) (sheet)
Accession number: 2021.7
Copyright: © John W. McCoy Estate
Curatorial RemarksLafayette’s Headquarters was painted in 1946 at a time when John McCoy and Andrew Wyeth were painting similar outdoor subjects in Chadds Ford and Maine, sometimes together. The iconic Lafayette’s Headquarters, visible in the background in this painting, can also be seen in Wyeth’s Pennsylvania Landscape of several years earlier (1941). While the Museum collection includes one of McCoy’s early Chadds Ford watercolors, this one stands out, demonstrating his skill in capturing the effects of sunlight and shadow and his ability to be expressive through fluid and spontaneous brushstrokes. There is a subdued mood in the painting that is enlivened by the dark tonality and agitated rendering of the grass and cart in the foreground, contrasted by the lightness and washy quality of the land and building in the background.