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Reverse not inscribed
The reverse inscription information is known from a photograph provided by the Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, Massachusetts.
On the reverse of the canvas board is a label from Wadsworth, Howland & Co., a well-known artists' supplies store in Boston.
Commentary
This is the earliest known work that bears a close variant of what would become Gorky’s newly invented pseudonym. Gorky's given name was Vosdanig “Manoug” Adoian but he rejected this in favor of a name that sounded less Armenian, as was typical of many Armenian immigrants at the time. He settled on Arshile Gorky around 1932 after having experimented with several spelling variations, including “Archele,” “Archel,” and “Gorki,” or, as it is here, “Arshele." He admired Maxim Gorky (b. Alexei Maximovich Peshkov; 1868–1936), a feeling shared by many of his countrymen because of the Russian-born writer’s support for the plight of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire.1 Many falsely believed there to be a relation between the two men—a misunderstanding that Gorky often did not correct. One of the earliest known instances where this affiliation appears in print is a September 1926 announcement of Gorky's faculty appointment to the Grand Central School of Art in New York, in which the reporter identifies him as a cousin of the writer.2 According to Helen Sandow (1906–2000), a close friend, when she once asked Gorky if the putative cousinship were true, he retorted, "'of course not. But I'm sick and tired of their asking me if I was, so I just say Yes.'"3 Although Gorky wasn't proficient in the language, his pseudonym—across its various spellings—is most often translated from Russian, with "Gorky" and its variants meaning "bitter." The origins of his first name, “Arshile,” are less clear. Among the theories are a reference to Archie Gunn—an American name inspired by Western movies—or a reference to “Achilles” from Greek mythology. It is also worth noting that “Arshile” shares the familiar prefix “Ar” used in many traditional Armenian names.
The first owner of the painting was Katherine O'Donnell Murphy (c. 1884–1976), who purchased it directly from Gorky in the spring of 1924 while both were students at the New School of Design in Boston (later called the New England School of Design). In a letter of 1951, she recalled: "During the noon recesses, Gorky used to sketch outdoors and one dull day, Gorky painted a small panel of the Park Street Church. A parishioner passing by offered Gorky five dollars for the painting if he would make his figures more distinct and less like peasants. Naturally Gorky was furious and returned to the school enraged but sorry that he had not sold the little oil for $5.00 and offering it at that price. So I gave him $10.00 for the little oil and $10.00 was quite a sum to me then."4
1. After World War I, Maxim Gorky worked for the Armenian Relief Organization and in 1916 he coedited an anthology of Armenian poetry translated into Russian.
2. "Fetish of Antique Stifles Art Here, Says Gorky Kin," New York Evening Post (September 15, 1926): 17.
3. "Helen Sandow: Gorky in the Twenties and Thirties," November 22, 1993, in Spender, ed., The Plow and the Song, 40; Helen Sandow, interview with Matthew Spender, November 22, 1993, transcript, Matthew Spender Papers, AGF Archives.
4. Letter from Katherine O'Donnell Murphy, to Ethel Schwabacher, July 29, 1951, Arshile Gorky Research Collection (1936–1993), Francis Mulhall Achilles Library, Archives, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.