The paintings in Scarlet Street were by noted Hollywood portraitist John Decker.
They succeed admirably as believable examples of what a talented yet untaught folk artist might create in mid-century America.
My theory (and I need to research this further) is that, instructed to create pictures that could have conceivably been painted by either a man or a woman, Decker consciously imitated the styles of Frida Kahlo and Tamara de Lempika with some Henri Rousseau thrown in.
In his brief but gem-filled essay exploring the multi-leveled symbolism of Scarlet Street, Roger Westcombe points out that timid Chris Cross’s “obsessive love of painting becomes a metaphor for a life lived at arm’s length.”
