Southern+Gate

Date: 1942-1943
 * [[image:http://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=http://americanart.si.edu/images/1980/1980.137.19_1a.jpg&max=460 link="@http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=5780"]] || Title: **Southern Gate**

Artist: **Eldzier Cortor** Born: Richmond, Virginia 1916 Died: Seaford, New York 2015

Medium: oil on canvas Dimension: 46 1/4 x 22 in. (117.5 x 55.8 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection

Accession: 1980.137.19 || Painted in the early years of World War II, //Southern Gate// offers, a surreal, dreamlike picture of a solemn young woman standing in a space defined by a once-elegant wrought-iron fence, a river, and the steeple of a distant church. They are evocative elements – the river is a traditional metaphor for passage, the fence an emblem of both confinement and of safe haven from the outside world. Wearing a necklace adorned with a cross and with a bird perched on her shoulder, she invites associations with the Virgin Mary; but Cortor’s figure is as physical as she is innocent, an Edenic Eve who stands outside the sacred garden.
 * Exhibition Label: **

//African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond//, 2012

Eldzier Cortor, Painter of Scenes From African-American Social Life, Dies at 99 - New York Times, obituary
 * Resources: **

SAAM Collections Page Artist Biography
 * Links: **