King, Leaping Zebra Among Palms — Naïve Oil on Canvas, Gilt Frame

There is something genuinely wild happening in this painting. The zebra doesn't trot — it erupts, mid-air, mouth open, legs splayed in four directions at once, stripes blazing black and cream against a flat chartreuse field that reads from across the room like a shout. The artist known as King paints in the naïve tradition — no atmospheric depth, no apology for proportion — but the confidence here is complete. Red-fruited palms cluster at the right, stylized foliage crowds the foreground, and the whole scene hums with the kind of compressed energy that academic painters spend careers trying to manufacture and naïve painters occasionally just have.

The zebra's striping is laid in with assured, fluid brushwork — bold sweeping blacks over cream, the mane and tail in solid black, the legs and muzzle softened to a warm pale tone that gives the figure its strange, dreaming quality. It belongs to a lineage that runs from Henri Rousseau's jungle interiors through American self-taught animal painting without being beholden to either. The canvas is housed in a substantial gilt gesso frame carrying a repeating Art Nouveau lotus-and-palmette motif — period, ornate, and exactly right for a painting this assertive. Hung without glass, as it should be. Signed "King" lower right.

CONDITION

Good. The painted surface presents with strong, saturated color and no remarkable damage. The gilt gesso frame shows scuffing, chipping, and localized paint loss consistent with age and handling — nothing that competes with the canvas at distance.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Overall (framed): 32 1/2" H × 41 1/4" W × 1 1/4" D
• Visible (sight): 25" H × 33 3/4" W
• Medium: Oil on stretched canvas
• Frame: Gilt gesso, without glass
• Signed: "King," lower right