JOHN KANENo art education, a working man. Tragic death of his first boy (his & his wifes 3rd children) unnerved him totally; he left his home and began 25 years of drinking , wandering, working intermittently, unable to rest. He learned and practiced 2 new trades, carpentry and housepainting. A habit of of painting pictures for pleasure helped comfort him, and perhaps finally brought him the calm he sought. Artcollectors knew nothing about his work as he spent his life outside the so called artworld. "Rich people are in a class by themselves", Kane stated. Rich art collectors knew nothing about his pictures, but working men began paying from five to twenty-five dollars for his pictutes.
1927, Kane at age of 67, he got a painting accepted for a respected exhibition. And: "When you walk the way of life all your days with the poor, as I have, one honor more , one rebuff the less is nothing" , he wrote. Yet honors began coming to him. He gave up house painting and working man's life at the age of seventy(!) and settled down in the Pittsburgh slums. There, after a quater of century of desperate workingman's life, drinking and painting he rejoined his wife, who accepted him back in Pittsburgh. 
There he painted his finest picture "The self portrait". There the artist stands stripped til the waist as if for a chest X ray (later died of tuberculosis at 74 years of age), bringing his hands, strong, work-worn. Hands together in a gesture of resignation, consenting to give up laboring and be just himself alone. The face deathly calm as if the mouth would never speak again, and if the eyes were awainting a sign from heaven. BIOPGRAPHY 1860 John Cain born West Caldor, Scotland 1879 Travels doing factory & construction work Pennsylvania, Alabama, Tennessee 1879 Emigrates to US 1897 Marries Maggie Halloran; works painting boxcars Pennsylvania 1904 After death of infant son, begins to drink 1904 Hereafter separated from family 1910 Name changed to Kane, result of bank clerk's error Akron, OH 1927 On 3rd try, painting admitted; instant sensation Carnegie International Exhibition, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA 1927 Becomes 1st self-taught painter to "make it" 1934 Dies of TB Pittsburgh, PA EXHIBITIONS 1984 John Kane, Modern America's First Folk Painter, Galerie St. Etienne and other venues New York, NY 1938 Masters of Popular Painting, Museum of Modern Art New York, NY [ © All the rights to Kane's work belong to his relatives/their agreements. Some text/info modiefied from the book "300 hundred years of American painting" + various sources.] 
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