Wash Day in the Country by John Crampton Nichols

This view adopts some several conventions of folk painting: a non-linear perspective, extremely simplified renderings of structures and people; and a “coverage” of the scene that feels complete. The style was one of several for Nichols. Perhaps most intriguing here is a network of lines, or tributaries, that link together disparate elements. Smoke from a house at bottom reaches a vegetable plot, but goes no further; the trunk of a large tree at center continues upward as a road, and its branches all serves as “paths” to different objects in the painting. The wash line at bottom left is just one of many lines.