Architecture in Art: A Winter Painting by my Great-Grandmother

There’s a small painting that hangs at the top of the stairs in my childhood home, safely tucked away from natural light. It’s been a while since I studied it in detail, but as a little girl I was mesmerized by the scene. I don’t recall knowing, however, that my great-grandmother, Patsy (most commonly called Pattie or Pat) Chandler Prewitt was the artist.

The small oil painting shows a snow-covered rural scene, with a front gable house in the background, a well, and split-rail fence.  Skeletal trees are framed by an icy winter sky – a sky that looks much like the one I see right now out of my window!

When I was younger, I always thought the painting depicted a barn, but I don’t know of any barn that would boast a chimney quite so large. I’ve wondered quite a bit about the painting and the scene it depicts, during the long gray days of this winter. It’s not any of the family houses, and if it was a building my great-grandmother knew, it has now vanished from the landscape. There are many buildings she would have known that are long gone – barns, ice houses, tenant houses, schools, and churches – all once vital components in a rural, agrarian based life.

Born in 1877 as the fifth of nine children, Pattie grew up at the house known in my family as Mt. Pleasant. It began as a brick hall-parlor plan built in the early 19th century, and was purchased by the Prewitt family in the 1830s. Pattie’s grandfather would add onto the house, as did her parents, transforming it from a hall-parlor plan to a central passage plan and finally to an Italianate style house with a three-story tower on the façade.

On February 27, 1901, she married her cousin, Edward Rogers Prewitt, and welcomed their first son a year later. My grandmother was born the following summer after her brother, and her younger sister arrived in the spring of 1905.

In 1906, she and Ed built a house on top of the hill on the same road where they both grew up. It’s long been one of my favorite of the family houses, both for the wrap-around porch and the thousands of daffodils, planted by my great-grandmother, that bloom every spring.

I never knew my great-grandmother – she comes to life only through stories, photographs, and a love of gardening. She also apparently painted  – I don’t know if there are more works by her hands scattered around the family, or if she painted this scene specifically for my grandmother. But I love the moody winter scene, and this small glimpse I have into her life.