John Kane

John Kane

Infobox Artist
bgcolour = #6495ED
name = John Kane


imagesize =
caption = Book cover of a John Kane biography
birthname =
birthdate = birth date |1860|8|19
location = West Calder, Scotland
deathdate = death date and age |1934|8|10|1860|8|19|
deathplace =
nationality = American
field = Painting
training =
movement = Naïve art
works =
patrons =
influenced by =
influenced =
awards =

John Kane (1860 – 1934) was an American painter celebrated for his skill in Naïve art.

He is also considered to be the first self-taught painter in the 20th century to be recognized by a museum. When, on his third attempt, his work was admitted to the 1927 Carnegie International Exhibition, he was lionized by the media and inadvertently paved the way for other self-taught artists, from Grandma Moses to Outsider Art. Today Kane is remembered for his landscape paintings of industrial Pittsburgh, many of which are held by major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Early life

He was born John Cain to Irish parents in West Calder, Scotland on August 19, 1860. His father died when he was age 10, leaving behind a widow and 7 children. Young Kane quit school to work in the shale mines. After his mother remarried, he emigrated to the United States at age 19, following his stepfather and older brother Patrick, who had preceded him to America and were working in Braddock, Pennsylvania, just south of Pittsburgh.

Kane as an American laborer

He first worked for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad at McKeesport as a gandy-dancer, one who stamps down stones between the railroad ties. Next he worked a stint in the steel industry at the National Tube Company in McKeesport, but soon left for a job in Connellsville, Pennsylvania at the coke ovens of Henry Clay Frick.

In the mid-1880s Kane moved on to mine coal in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, but he returned to Western Pennsylvania, where he got other mining jobs, in order to be closer to his family.

Tragedy strikes

In 1891, while he was walking along the B&O railroad tracks, an engine running without its lights struck down Kane, severing his left leg 5 inches below the knee. He was fitted with an artificial limb, and his disability landed him a new job with the B&O as a watchman. He stayed on there 8 years.

Begins as a painter

He left his watchman job to paint steel railroad cars at the Pressed Steel Car Company in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, on the Ohio River just south of downtown Pittsburgh. He began to draw on the side of railroad cars on his lunch hour to "fill in the colors". His sketched landscapes disappeared after lunch beneath the standard, solid color of the railroad car paint. For a short time he tried to earn money by enlarging and tinted photographs for working-class families.

Kane had married Maggie Halloran in 1897 at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Pittsburgh. The death of an infant son in 1904 led him into a vortex of drinking and depression, which caused long periods of wandering, during which he worked as an itinerant house painter and carpenter. In Akron, Ohio in 1910 he first began to do pictorial paintings on discarded boards from construction sites. By the end of World War I, Kane was again in Pittsburgh, where he spent the remainder of his life. He remained separated from his wife and children.

In both 1925 and 1926 he submitted paintings to the Carnegie Internationals sponsored by the Carnegie Museum of Art, but the works were rejected. The next year, however, the jury accepted "Scene in the Scottish Highlands". The story of the untrained 67-year-old painter's success was trumpeted by the newspapers. The publicity around the show came to the notice of Kane's wife, who was living in West Virginia, and with whom he'd lost contact for over ten years. They reconciled and remained together during the last years of his life.

Kane continued to paint his primitive landscapes and self-portraits. He had his first New York one-man show in 1931.

John Kane died of tuberculosis on August 10, 1934 and is interred at Pittsburgh's Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery.

External links

* [http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartthumbnails.asp?aid=9215 John Kane artwork]

References

*cite book | author=Arkus, Leon Anthony | title=John Kane, Painter | location=Pittsburgh | publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press | year=1971 | id=ISBN 0-8229-3217-2

Persondata
NAME=Kane, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Cain, John
SHORT DESCRIPTION=American painter
DATE OF BIRTH=1860
PLACE OF BIRTH=West Calder, Scotland
DATE OF DEATH=1934
PLACE OF DEATH=Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania


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