previous
Verso not inscribed
The drawing is on Strathmore "Fiesta" paper. According to extant Strathmore “Fiesta” sample booklets, the sheet’s deckled-edges would have originally been tinted mulberry, but the mulberry ink has apparently lightened to lavender. “Fiesta” paper, available at 26 x 40 inches a sheet, had colored, deckled edges at top and bottom, and in a variety of colors. The drawing's approximately 20 x 26 inches are the result of the original sheet being halved down its center. It is one of ten known drawings by Gorky on this type of support.
Verso, in pencil, lower left [not in artist's hand]: JL; upper right: ↑ Top; lower right: 20 x 31 / 19 1/2 [line] 5 1/2 x 20 1/4 [line] 5 3/4; [illegible] 125
The verso inscription information and marking are known from a photograph provided by Christie's, New York.
Commentary
The drawing was likely created at Crooked Run Farm during Gorky’s second summer there in 1944. In early May that year, the Gorky family left New York and returned to Crooked Run—the rural Lincoln, Virginia, home of Agnes "Mougouch" Gorky's (1921–2013) parents Esther (1896–1990) and John H. Magruder II (1889–1963)—this time staying for close to six months. It proved another creatively productive period for Gorky, who wrote to his younger sister, “I have drawn many new drawings which are among my best.”1 He was again captivated by his surroundings: the tall grasses, thistles, milkweed, and ragweed; reportedly lamenting, when the fields were mown, “they are cutting down the Raphaels.”2 The barn on the property, which Gorky temporarily repurposed as a studio, was populated with a collection of dried horse bones, “old rusty farm implements,” “bits of machinery,” and haystacks.3
Having reduced his activity as a dealer during the early years of the war, Julien Levy (1906–1981) moved his gallery to its final location of 42 East 57th Street in March 1943. He signed a contract with Gorky in December 1944. Levy had known Gorky for over ten years at this point, without having shown an interest in representing his work. He offered the artist a contract following a recommendation from André Breton (1896–1966), who promised to write an introductory essay to Gorky’s debut solo show, which opened in March 1945.4 This drawing is among the first selection of works that Levy received from the artist on December 21, 1944. Based on this fact, it is probable, though unconfirmed, that it was included in the 1945 exhibition.
1. Letter from Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, c. 1944, Arshile Gorky/Mooradian Archive, Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York; Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, c. 1944, in Matthew Spender, ed., Arshile Gorky: The Plow and the Song: A Life in Letters and Documents, trans. Father Krikor Maksoudian (Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018), 307.
2. Arshile Gorky, as quoted in letter from Mougouch Gorky to Jeanne Reynal, Summer 1944, in Spender, ed., The Plow and the Song, 309.
3. Letter from Mougouch Gorky to Jeanne Reynal, November 1944, in ibid, 319-20.
4. Julien Levy Gallery, New York, Arshile Gorky, March 6–31, 1945.