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Lot Essay
In Untitled (Pregnant in the Field), Winfred Rembert remembers the hardships and realities of his childhood in the Jim Crow South where he grew up picking cotton and peanuts. Here, a very pregnant woman holds her swollen belly and yells out in pain, perhaps indicating she is in labor. A man holds her shoulders and offers support, while a child looks on with concern. The young boy may be a self-portrait of Rembert as he often represents himself in his work as a child. He holds a slingshot in one hand, emphasizing his youthful innocence, but his expression reveals an acute understanding of the pain suffered. In his memoir, Rembert recalls how common it was for women to give birth in the cotton field, “Women had their babies and they’d go right back to work, right then and there” (Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South (New York, 2021), p. 23). By leaving the background plain and without detail, Rembert draws the viewer’s attention to the composition, its figures and their expressions. He suggests that the scene takes place in a field with their shovels. They pause only momentarily and will continue their labor after the event passes. The experience of pregnancy is a theme that Rembert visits several times in his work and his memories of witnessing it had a lasting impact on him (see Pregnant in the Cotton Field, 1996 in op. cit., p. 27, illustrated).
Born in Cuthbert, Georgia in 1945, Rembert did not start creating art until the age of 51, after two times in jail and a near-lynching. As a teenager, he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was first arrested after one demonstration which ended with him running from armed policemen and stealing an unlocked car as a means to get away. He then escaped jail, was caught once more and hung by a mob of white men, but not killed. He spent the next seven years on a chain gang. Later in life after his release from jail, he married his wife Patsy Gammage and settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Patsy encouraged Rembert to use his leather-tooling skills that he learned while in prison to create pictures. His autobiographical work ranges from depictions of joyful memories of his childhood to the realities of the Jim Crow South and incarceration as a Black man. Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, a year after his passing.
Born in Cuthbert, Georgia in 1945, Rembert did not start creating art until the age of 51, after two times in jail and a near-lynching. As a teenager, he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He was first arrested after one demonstration which ended with him running from armed policemen and stealing an unlocked car as a means to get away. He then escaped jail, was caught once more and hung by a mob of white men, but not killed. He spent the next seven years on a chain gang. Later in life after his release from jail, he married his wife Patsy Gammage and settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Patsy encouraged Rembert to use his leather-tooling skills that he learned while in prison to create pictures. His autobiographical work ranges from depictions of joyful memories of his childhood to the realities of the Jim Crow South and incarceration as a Black man. Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, a year after his passing.