Came's House

George Ault's meticulously drawn lithograph, printed in light pencil-like gray tones, is a partial view of a pristine white clapboard farmhouse, accented by dark shutters. In the well-groomed lawn of the front yard, a lone tree stands as a sturdy survivor from storms that evidently have claimed several major branches. The house was the Woodstock, New York, home of the artist's neighbor and landlord Camebridge (Came) Lasher (or Lasker), a ruggedly individualistic farmer who prospered despite being illiterate. From 1937 until his death, Ault lived year-round in Woodstock, located in the picturesque Catskill Mountains of southern New York, where he could live more affordably on his meager income. When Came died in 1941, Ault mourned the loss of his kindly neighbor.

Came's House is the only known impression of one of only three known prints (including two lithographs) made by Ault, who is more familiar for his paintings and drawings. The print is related to a drawing (date and location unknown) and to a painting (1933, Albany Institute of History and Art). In 1934, the year Ault made Came's House, he joined the federal artists' relief project under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), for which he may have created his images of his neighbor's home. The photographic precision and perfectionism of this lithograph, ironically reminiscent of commercial illustration, reflects Ault's stylistic association in the 1920s with the movement known as precisionism, characterized by exact lines and smoothly modeled surfaces inspired by the stripped-down aesthetic of machinery. In its haunting stillness, this superficially ordinary scene also echoes Ault's interest during the 1930s in the dream-like imagery of surrealism, which draws on everyday objects and experience to evoke the strangeness inherent in everyday experience. These artistic currents dovetailed with Ault's tragic personal and familial history of mental illness.

L'Amérique et les Modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

Adams, Clinton. The Woodstock Ambience, 1917–1939. (exh. cat., Tamarind Institute). Albuquerque, New Mexico: Tamarind Institute/University Art Museum, 1981, p. 12.

American Modernist Prints: 1900–1945. (exh. cat., Susan Sheehan Inc.). New York: Susan Sheehan Inc., 1987. No. 57.

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text pp. 13–14; fig. 6, p. 14 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text pp. 13–14; fig. 6, p. 14 (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]