American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Papageorge Family Collection

Exhibited

"Frank E. Schoonover," The Gift Horse Art Gallery, West Chester, Pennsylvania, March 29-April 29, 1967.

Literature

Courtney Ryley Cooper, “Oklahoma," in Country Gentleman, March 1926, p. 9 (illustrated).
Louise Schoonover Smith, LeeAnn Dean and John R. Schoonover, Frank E. Schoonover: Catalogue Raisonné, Oak Knoll Press, Newcastle, 2009, Vol. II, pp. 451-452, no. 1422 (illustrated).

Note

Snowstorm at Poor Folks Haven (alternatively, Poor Folks Haven, Snow Storm - Now It Was Nearing Christmas) depicts a dramatic episode from Courtney Ryley Cooper's "Oklahoma," serialized in Country Gentleman between March and June 1926. According to a New York Times review (of Cooper's subsequent novel of the same name), this was a "tale of the birth of a State that in one generation has leaped forward at a bound from an infancy of virgin prairie, Indian tepees and scattered bands of grazing cattle into vast wealth, great cities, thronging population, [and] worldwide fame" (September 5, 1926). Schoonover, one of the preeminent illustrators of his generation, contributed multiple images to each installment of "Oklahoma"; the March iteration transported readers to the state's earliest days–specifically, to the Land Rush of 1889, when, by presidential proclamation, the Unassigned Lands (of former Indian Territory) would be open for settlement. Snowstorm at Poor Folks Haven, rendered in a selective palette of white, umber, and icy blue, suggests the Rush was not without hardship. Makeshift tents and Conestoga wagons crowd the composition's middleground; one recent arrival, clutching a bundle of firewood, trudges through the snow. The caption that accompanied Schoonover's illustration ("It was nearing Christmas, snow lay deep; boomers in pore [sic] folks’ haven shivered in their temporary abodes") reinforced the precariousness of westward expansion, while the artist's cornflower skies, visible at some remove, offer viewers (and readers) a glimmer of hope.