Intimate Modernism at the Amon Carter, part five

I've written about how the Amon Carter's 'Intimate Modernism' provides an opportunity to consider American modernism within the context of 20thC American history. Here's a painting in which art and progressivism come together.

In 1945 Dickson Reeder made this painting, Conversation Piece.

At the time, Fort Worth was a segregated, semi-Southern city. As in most other Southern cities there were separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites, and blacks were made to sit in the back of the bus. Lunch counters were segregated. Schools were segregated and would remain so until 1962-63, a change forced only after the NAACP won a lawsuit it filed in 1959.

Racial hatred had deep roots in north Texas. In the 1920s Dallas had the largest Ku Klux Klan chapter in the US, with Fort Worth's close behind. The Klan was so widely accepted in Fort Worth that the big annual livestock show featured a 'Klan Day.'

So how was it that Reeder was able to paint Conversation Piece, a painting of innocence and friendship complete with children-holding-hands paper-cutout, nine years before Brown and 18 years before the Children's Crusade in Birmingham? Was there a backlash against the image in Fort Worth or discussion of the painting among Reeder's circle or anyone else? The show's catalogue doesn't spend any time on the socio-cultural questions the painting raises.

Not only did Reeder paint his son playing with a girl believed to be the daughter of the family's maid, he focuses the viewer on the little girl. She is more richly painted, and the comics pages on the wall behind her serve to push her toward the viewer. The painting revolves around her.

And why did Reeder make Conversation Piece? (Is the title a hint?) The catalogue does not suggest that Reeder was updating Manet's Olympia Texas-style, but that seems likely, right down to the color of the girl's head-scarf and the inclusion of a cat. According to the Reeder bio in the catalogue, Reeder was an eager portraitist of distinguished Fort Worthers. Apparently he didn't worry that Conversation Piece might cost him portrait commissions?

Related: Intimate Modernism at the Amon Carter part one, two, three, four.