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Commentary
The titling of this painting has a less complicated history than the majority of the seventeen paintings that Joseph H. Hirshhorn (1899–1981) purchased directly from the artist between 1941 and 1943. The variation in the Hirshhorn's titles originates with a list of the collector's purchases, thought to be composed by the artist's wife Agnes "Mougouch" Gorky (1921–2013), and dated March 20, 1943. On this list, the painting is titled Portrait of My Sister, Vartoosh.1 When the painting entered the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1966, it was assigned the title Portrait of Vartoosh. While a 1979 exhibition dedicated to the museum’s collection of Gorky paintings and drawings was under preparation, correspondence with the artist's nephew Karlen Mooradian (1935–1990) further suggested that the painting was a portrait of his mother (the artist's younger sister), Vartoosh Mooradian (née Adoian; 1906–1991).2 The title Portrait of Vartoosh was accordingly retained.3
As it appears here, the painting’s title is based on Jim M. Jordan’s catalogue raisonné where it is published as Portrait of Vartoosh, yet set within quotes, indicating—erroneously—that it was a lifetime designation.4 In 1949, Joseph Hirshhorn claimed that Gorky never provided him with titles for the works he had acquired, but the 1943 list presents the possibility that Gorky did assign a title to this work, namely, Portrait of My Sister, Vartoosh.5
For just over a year beginning in September 1935, Vartoosh, her husband Moorad (1896–1963), and their young son Karlen, lived with Gorky in his studio at 36 Union Square, New York. During their stay Gorky made a pencil drawing of Vartoosh. In a letter to his sister from late 1937, by which point the Mooradians had moved to Chicago, Gorky states that "from that [drawing] I have made four very magnificent oil paintings," of which this is one (see also P113; the third and fourth are unidentified).6 Gorky never succeeded in delivering these paintings to Vartoosh. At the time of Hirshhorn's purchase in the early 1940s, Gorky backdated the painting to 1922.
1. “Sold to Mr. Joseph H. Hirshhorn,” March 20, 1943, AGF Archives. Letter from Agnes Gorky Phillips to Phyllis Rosenzweig, November 12, 1977, AGF Archives. On Agnes's authorship, see: Phyllis Rosenzweig, “Catalog,” in Arshile Gorky: The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection Smithsonian Institution, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979), 8, fn. 1.
2. Rosenzweig, “Catalog,” 8.
3. Rosenzweig, "Illustrations and Text," 20.
4. Jim M. Jordan, "Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings," in Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater, The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue (New York and London: New York University Press, 1982), 238–39.
5. “Gorky never gave me titles or a bill for these pictures and if he did I do not remember receiving one.” Letter from Joseph H. Hirshhorn to Wolfgang Schwabacher, February 21, 1949, AGF Archives.
6. Letter from Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, [September or December] 18, 1937, Arshile Gorky/Mooradian Archive, Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York. Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, [Month unknown] 18, 1937, 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), 154, 156.