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Commentary
The painting is after Henri Matisse's (1869–1954) 1908 painting L'Ilyssus du Parthénon (location unknown), a color reproduction of which Gorky owned; an identical colorplate was published in the March 1927 issue of the magazine The Dial.1 As the only known color reproduction of the painting printed during Gorky's lifetime, this was likely his source. Gorky's friend, the artist Jacob Kainen (1909–2001) recalled seeing the painting during a visit to Gorky's studio in 1934: "he pulled out The Antique Cast [P068], a painting so reminiscent of Matisse's Still Life with Greek Torso of 1908 that at first I almost believed it was the original Matisse, which I knew from reproductions. Then I realized that the composition and color scheme were entirely different—Gorky had absorbed Matisse without copying him. . . . He seemed pleased when I identified Matisse as the source."2
Gorky often backdated his paintings and also frequently reworked the same canvas over many years. Here, "1926" inscribed at lower left likely refers to the former scenario. Stylistically, it is more likely that the painting was completed c. 1928–29. It should be noted that when he loaned the painting to the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1941 for his first solo museum exhibition, he gave it the date of 1926.3
When the Austrian-American artist Mina Boehm Metzger (1877–1975), an early pupil and devoted patron of Gorky's, purchased this painting from the artist's dealer Julien Levy (1906–1981) on July 5, 1947, Gorky received a total of $960 after the subtracted 20 percent sales commission.
1. The image appears between a "comment" by J.S.W. [James Sibley Watson] on Thomas Craven's essay, "Photography and Painting," and an essay by George Saintsbury, "Irony," The Dial LXXXII (March 1927): 181–87. J.S.W. [James Sibley Watson], "Comment," in ibid: 180; the comment is written in response to: Thomas Craven, "Photography and Painting," The Dial LXXIX (September 1925): 195–202.
2. Jacob Kainen, "Memories of Arshile Gorky," ARTS Magazine 50, no. 7 (March 1976): 96.
3. Typed shipping manifest, August 5, 1941, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Archives.