Rough Games

Health & Safety officers avert your eyes now! The Butler Institute of American Art has acquired this genre painting by James Longacre Wood Mumble the Peg (1892) which shows barefooted boys playing this once-popular game, tossing a jack knife so that its blade stuck firmly in the ground. The painting will be hung in the Butler’s Cushwa Gallery, near another classic of the era: Winslow Homer’s Snap the Whip (CLICK). Not only are these genre paintings valuable historical records as well being fine art, but also they are clear precursors to that great American illustrator Norman Rockwell.