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Reverse not seen
The canvas was relined.
Commentary
An earlier state of the painting is known from a photograph in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art Archives (see supplementary image).1 Gorky often returned to the same canvas numerous times, however, little documentation exists of his reworkings. In this instance, the archival photograph provides rare documentary evidence of the artist's later additions, most notable in the several changes to the forms in the composition's lower center.
Although the title Sunset in Central Park is identified as lifetime in Jim M. Jordan's catalogue raisonné, there is no known extant documentation confirming its origin with the artist and we have therefore designated it as posthumous.2
The painting's first owners, the architect William Muschenheim (1902–1990) and his wife Lisa (1910–1967), met Gorky in 1931 through a mutual friend. The couple saw the artist frequently in New York and at their family home in Hampton Bays, Long Island, until the early 1940s. Of Gorky and his visits, William Muschenheim later recalled: "Conversations were always stimulating. They were usually about art, people, attitudes towards daily and more significant occurrences. . . . [Gorky] frequently spoke about his childhood, his experiences on the beaches of the Caspian Sea, and of his mother. We did not see much of him after his last marriage [to Agnes "Mougouch" Magruder (1921–2013) in September 1941], particularly after they moved to Connecticut [in December 1944]."3
1. Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library and Archives, Arshile Gorky Research Collection, Box 4.
2. Jim M. Jordan, "Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings," in The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, by Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater (New York and London: New York University Press, 1982), 223–24.
3. Letter from William Muschenheim to Karlen Mooradian, May 18, 1966, AGF Archives.
