Country Doctor (Night Call)

Limiting himself almost entirely to gray, white, and black, Pippin shows a country doctor’s nighttime journey in winter. The grandson of slaves, Pippin was entirely self-taught as an artist, his desire to go to art school having been thwarted by a World War I injury that crippled his right arm. Even so, he achieved artistic—and eventually commercial—success, rendering astonishing effects despite a painfully slow and laborious painting process.