Untitled (Shed Interior) [verso]
n.d.
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
soot on found paper
Dimensions
sheet: 17.15 × 22.54 cm (6 3/4 × 8 7/8 in.) irregular
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of James Castle Collection and Archive, and Acquisition with Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund
Accession Number
2013.33.20.b
Art Historical Context
James Castle's *Untitled (Shed Interior [verso]* offers a poignant glimpse into the artist's intimate world of rural domesticity. Created using soot on found paper—a modest sheet measuring just 17.15 × 22.54 cm with irregular edges—this drawing captures the humble interior of a shed, likely from Castle's family farm in rural Idaho. As a self-taught artist was deaf and did not use formal language, Castle transformed everyday scraps into profound visual narratives, working in isolation throughout the 20th century. The medium itself is a testament to Castle's ingenuity: soot, collected from a wo...
About the Artist
James Castle
**James Castle: A Self-Taught Visionary of Rural America** James Charles Castle was born on September 25, 1899, on a remote farm in Garden Valley, Idaho, to Frank and Mary Castle, local postmasters and the parents of seven children, of whom he was the fifth. Profoundly deaf from birth, Castle attended the Gooding School for the Deaf and Blind from ages ten to fifteen but never mastered sign langu...