From the Vault: Stoop Sitting in Georgetown

Stoop Sitting in Georgetown, Gladys Nelson Smith (1888-1980),
17 1/8 x 19 1/4 oil on canvas, 1925

Where does the Georgetown University Art Collection acquire its artwork?

Most have been donations from generous alumni and other friends of the University. Additionally, Curator of Prints and former Treasurer of Georgetown University Joseph A. Haller, S.J., highly regarded for his expertise and connoisseurship, has spent more than a quarter century making purchases for the Print Collection, which number more than 10,000 and are kept within Lauinger's Special Collections. Most paintings, sculpture, furniture, decorative arts, and historical artifacts, however, have been gifts to the University.

The Art Collection is thus proud that its recent first purchase, Stoop Sitting in Georgetown by Gladys Nelson Smith (1888-1980), enriches the University's holdings in both twentieth-century American art and Georgetown history. Stoop Sitting was shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, where the artist exhibited in the Corcoran Biennials, the sixth oldest continuous exhibition series in the United States. She had a solo exhibit in 1984-85 and studied at the Corcoran School earlier in her career. A Kansas native who graduated from the University of Kansas School of Fine Arts, she painted Stoop Sitting the year after she arrived in Washington. She had several solo exhibits and won a number of prizes for her work.*

This small (17 1/8 x 19 ¼), oil-on-canvas Impressionist-style painting depicts three African-American women on the stoop of a gray wood-fronted, two-story row house such as are common throughout Georgetown. It is probably a spring scene--green leaves are beginning to fill the branches, and a bright mid-day blue sky can be seen above the house and around cumulus clouds.

The exact location of the house depicted in this painting is not known. Earlier in the twentieth century, when Georgetown was still a port village, row houses such as this extended closer to the waterfront, where shops, offices, and apartments stand today. These blocks were home to some of the city's African-American communities; Stoop Sitting in Georgetown may be a record of life in one such area.

The Georgetown University Art Collection looks forward to continuing to expand our holdings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American paintings.

*see Virgil E. McMahan, The Artists of Washington, D.C. 1796-1996 (Washington: The Artists of Washington, 1995), pp. 201-02.