CHRISTIE'S
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| Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980), New Jerusalem. Acrylic and ink on pieced card. 6¾ x 7¾ in (9.5 x 19.6 cm). Estimate $3,000-5,000. Offered in Outsider Art on 17 January 2020 at Christie’s in New York |
Following a series of divine revelations in 1957,
Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900–1980) began to paint. ‘Jesus just took my hand,’ she maintained. For the next 16 years, the self-styled ‘Bride of Christ and housekeeper for Dada God’, who dressed only in a white nurse’s uniform, imparted her ecstatic visions of a New Jerusalem on old scraps of cardboard and paper. On 17 January, three paintings by this remarkable self-taught artist were offered in the
Outsider Art sale at Christie’s in New York. In 1939, she settled in New Orleans — ‘the headquarters of sin’ — where she became a fixture in the French Quarter, jangling her tambourine and exhorting the public to ‘wake up and hear about Jesus’. [
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| Sister Gertrude Morgan on the porch of her Everlasting Gospel Mission in New Orleans, photographed in 1973. © Guy Mendes |
