Beschreibung:

Helen Torr American, 1886-1967 Shell, Stone, Feather and Bark, 1931 Oil on board laid down on board 10 x 14 inches Provenance: Estate of the Artist Private collection, New York Exhibited: Helen Torr Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York, June 3-July 9 1972 and Graham Gallery, New York, July 17-August 18 972, no.18 Helen Torr 1886-1967 (In private Life, Mrs. Arthur Dove), Graham Gallery, New York, March 25-May 17, 1980, no.17 American Modernism, Graham Gallery, New York, Sep. 18-Oct. 20, 1984 Parrish Art Museum, Curator's Choice, Sep. 29-Nov. 10, 1985 Women of the Stieglitz Circle, Owings-Dewey Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 27-August 15, 1998 Out of the Shadows: Helen Torr A Retrospective, traveling exhibition, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York, February 1-April 14, 2003; Graham Gallery, New York, April 24-June 8, 2003; The Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 28-August 17, 2003; The Mitchell Gallery, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, September 2-October 26, 2003 Every Day Mysteries: Modern and Contemporary Still Life, DC Moore Gallery, New York, March 18-May 1, 2004 Helen Torr's surviving oeuvre spans a relatively brief period of no more than twenty years. Despite a solid grounding in art at Drexel Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she did not seem to have worked actively until she and Arthur Dove left their unhappy marriages to begin a life together, living in challenging and often uncomfortable circumstances. Her earliest work does not appear to have survived. Torr's earliest extant paintings date from around 1923-4, a period roughly coincident with the earliest diary notations made by either Dove or Torr in an account book. She worked more or less actively until 1938, when her husband became seriously ill in Centerport, Long Island, suffering from heart disease as well as a debilitating kidney condition. From that point, she became less productive, predominantly creating modest compositions on paper. She is thought to have ceased working as an artist after Dove's death in 1946. An estate inventory of her oeuvre, compiled by Ronald G. Pisano, numbers fewer than 230 objects; of which the present work is number 154. Shell, Stone, Feather and Bark was created when Torr was working more or less continually, when the artists were living in Halesite, Long Island and dividing their time between their 42-foot yawl, the Mona, and the Ketewomoke Yacht Club, where they occupied the top floor in exchange for providing caretaking services. Some of Torr's most compelling paintings of Huntington Harbor and Halesite date from this period. Known familiarly as Reds, Torr painted many still lifes, incorporating shells, leaves and flowers as well as matchbooks, scraps of fabric, letters and other articles that were at hand. Through the winter and spring of 1931, she focused primarily on still life subjects. The usually reticent painter was delighted when Alfred Maurer visited the artist-couple in July and called one work "exquisite." Although she devoted much of the summer to seascapes, in October she returned again to still life, noting on October 29, "I started painting of piece of bark, shell, stone + feather." [Arthur and Helen Torr Dove papers, 1905-1975. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution]. She completed the piece two days later. Executed in a cool, elegant palette, the present work incorporates objects of the sort that Reds typically collected in walks around the community. Here her collection is displayed in a shallow, indeterminate space, the objects themselves casting strong shadows as though illuminated by a bright source of light. It is clear that Torr reveled in delineating the twists and turns of the section of bark that dominates the composition.
Slight frame rubbing with a few scattered corresponding spots of inpaint at edges.