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Orange and White Theme
The artists are, in alphabetical order, John White Alexander, Helen Frankenthaler, Marsden Hartley, Mitchell Jamieson, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Egon Schiele, and Maurice Utrillo.
1
Child in Orange Dress With White Pinafore /
Kind in Orangefarbenem Kleid
Mit Weisser Schürze
Egon Schiele (1890-1918), Austrian
Gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper,
12" x 17" (w x h), 1911
Sotheby's 2010 auction, NY, sold $350,500 USD
Sotheby's notes edited:
This portrait of a child sleeping with its sharp pencil lines, the densely painted deep orange, and the handling of watercolor are an example of the artist's ability to juxtapose delicate washes of watercolor with bolder opaque accents of gouache, and of course his trademark pencil contours. The elevated viewpoint is a typical Schiele motif, one which adds to the sense of dislocation in the spaces his figures inhabit. Intriguing is the ambiguity of the relationship of this figure to her surroundings, leaving it to the viewer to interpret the work as they choose.
2
Card
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), American
Color lithograph, with orange crayon notations
on white wove paper, 10 x 17" (w x h), 1971
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Helen Frankenthaler:
"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it--well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that--there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute."
3
The Gossip
John White Alexander (1856-1915) American
Oil on canvas, 54" x 63" (w x h), 1912
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Museum label:
John White Alexander was celebrated for his gracious paintings of women in domestic interiors characterized by long, fluid lines and luminous color. The Gossip illustrates several influences derived from French Impressionism, including filtered light, active brushwork, and a bright palette. The artist's wife later remembered that Alexander was "especially interested in getting away from the usual studies of light," noting that the studio in which The Gossip was painted "was built to provide every need of lighting and cross lighting."
4
Beth
Morris Louis (1912-1962), American
Acrylic resin on canvas, 8'10" x 8'9" (w x h), 1960
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Wiki edited:
Morris Louis Bernstein, known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D.C., Louis, along with Kenneth Noland and other Washington painters, formed an art movement that is known today as the Washington Color School.
All of the Color Field artists were concerned with the classic problems of pictorial space and the flatness of the picture plane. In 1953, Louis and Noland visited Helen Frankenthaler's New York studio, where they saw and were greatly impressed by her stain paintings. Upon their return to Washington, Louis and Noland together experimented with various techniques of paint application. Louis characteristically applied extremely diluted, thinned paint to an unprimed, unstretched canvas, allowing it to flow over the inclined surface. The importance of Frankenthaler's example in Louis's development of this technique has been noted. Louis reported that he thought of Frankenthaler as the bridge between Jackson Pollock and the possible. However, even more so than Frankenthaler, Louis eliminated the brush gesture, although his flat, thin pigment is at times modulated in billowing and subtle tones.
5
Church with Red Roof and White Walls
Maurice Utrillo (1883- 1955), French
Oil on canvas, 29" x 21" (w x h), 1914
Barnes Collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Wiki notes, edited:
Maurice Utrillo, born Maurice Valadon, whose mother was noted French artist Suzanne Valadon, the first female painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Born when she was eighteen, beginning her role as an artist's model, she never revealed who was the father. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of Montmartre who was actually born there. Utrillo specialized in cityscapes.
With no training beyond what his mother taught him, he drew and painted what he saw in Montmartre. After 1910 his work attracted critical attention, and by 1920 he was internationally acclaimed. In 1928, the French government awarded him the Cross of the Légion d'honneur.
An anecdote told by Diego Rivera concerning Utrillo's paternity: "After Maurice was born to Suzanne Valadon, she went to Renoir, for whom she had modeled nine months previously. Renoir looked at the baby and said, 'He can't be mine, the color is terrible!' Next, she went to Degas, for whom she had also modeled. He said, 'He can't be mine; the form is terrible!' At a cafe, Valadon saw an artist she knew named Miguel Utrillo, to whom she spilled her woes. The man told her to call the baby Utrillo: 'I would be glad to put my name to the work of either Renoir or Degas!'"
6
Untitled
Kenneth Noland (1924-2010), American
Acrylic on canvas, 25" x 24" (w x h), 1958
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Smithsonian notes:
This untitled piece is a "proto-circle," one of Kenneth Noland's first circle paintings in which a bold black ring focuses the viewer's eyes on the colors and textures within. Noland felt that the "touch and application" of color was as important as its hue, and he applied the paint in heavy brushstrokes to emphasize the different stages of his working process. Stripes and dashes of green, orange, and yellow show partially through the white paint, as if waiting to burst through and fill the circle with color.
"I do open paintings. I like lightness, airiness, and the way color pulsates. The presence of the painting is all that's important." -Kenneth Noland
In 1977, he was honored by a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that then traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art in 1978. In 2006, Noland's Stripe Paintings were exhibited at the Tate in London. He was the fifth husband of his fourth wife. He died in Port Clyde, Maine in 2010.
7
Excavation at the White House
Mitchell Jamieson (1915-1976), American
Watercolor on paper, 17" x 23" (w x h), circa 1941
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Wiki notes, edited:
Mitchell Jamieson studied at the Abbott School of Art and the Corcoran School of Art. In the 1930s, he traveled to Key West and the US Virgin Islands to paint under the Treasury Department's Art Project, and received commissions to paint murals for post offices in Upper Marlboro and Laurel, Maryland; Willard, Ohio; and at the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C. During World War II, Jamieson served as a combat artist in the U.S. Navy. He sketched and painted the occupation on North Africa, the invasion of Sicily, the invasion of France, and the Okinawa invasion.
He was commissioned to paint a mural in what is now the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building to commemorate Marion Anderson's famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939. Titled An Incident in Contemporary American Life, the mural is still on view to the public who visit the building. See it HERE.
His works are in collections at the White House, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Seattle Art Museum.
8
Sextant
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), American
Oil on panel, 16" x 20" (w x h), circa 1917
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Wiki notes, edited:
Hartley, born in Lewiston, Maine in 1877, moved to an abandoned farm near Lovell, Maine, in 1908. He considered the paintings he produced there his first mature works, and they also impressed New York photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. Hartley had his first solo exhibition at Stieglitz's art gallery 291 in 1909, and exhibited his work there again in 1912. Stieglitz also provided Hartley's introduction to European modernist painters, of whom Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse would prove the most influential upon him, observing Cubist artists in Paris and Berlin.
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