A brilliant formula: Ammi Phillips's women in white.('Lady in White')(Critical essay)

For most artists there are defining influences--the work of other artists, period conventions, and historical and personal circumstances--that determine the content and provide a structural framework for their work. For Ammi Phillips there must also have been a "defining moment," when he first executed a painting in which he reused elements from an earlier work of his own. Thereafter, although his work clearly evolved through a series of major stylistic changes, he followed this pattern, reusing and reformulating certain aspects of his prior works. The result was a working process that was both efficient and creative.

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In 1976 the folk art scholar Mary C. Black described Lady in White (frontispiece) as one of Phillips's great "formula paintings," (1) using as a compliment a term more often art historically associated with an implied negative assessment. The painting was recognized at the time as part of a small group of the artist's works showing sitters wearing white dresses and almost reverently referred to as his women in white. (2) Our research has identified more than a dozen additional examples, and we have been able to divide the entire group into three smaller ones (early, transitional, and later) and to establish a probable chronological order for the likenesses. Fully half of our women in white fall into the latest group and are virtually unknown to most Phillips admirers, collectors, and scholars.

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