Grace Hartigan
Red Bowl
1952
Scroll
Grace Hartigan
Red Bowl
1952
Physical Qualities
Oil on hardboard, Framed: 23 1/2 × 25 5/8 × 1 1/2 in. (59.7 × 65.1 × 3.8 cm.)
Sight: 18 × 20 in. (45.7 × 50.8 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of Herman Jervis, New York, in Memory of Dorothy B. Jervis
Object Number
1986.194
Created at a pivotal moment early in Grace Hartigan’s career, this painting reflects her signature blend of figuration and abstraction. Red Bowl was first exhibited at her 1954 solo show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York City. Hartigan was business-savvy: after selling an artwork to the Museum of Modern Art, she leveraged her new prominence to
sell all the works in her show. Hartigan exhibited under the pseudonym George Hartigan, indicating the difficulties she anticipated and faced as a woman artist. “George” was an homage to George Eliot and George Sand, 19th-century writers (and women) who
also assumed male pen names to be taken seriously. From 1955 onward, she exhibited as Grace Hartigan.
Publication References
Hartigan, Grace, ed. William T. La Moy and Joseph P. McCaffrey, "The Journals of Grace Hartigan: 1951-1955," Syracuse University Press: 2009, p 85-86, 95, 125.
Baltimore Museum of Art, by gift, 1986; Herman Jervis (1909-2004), New York, NY by descent (from his wife); 1980; Dorothy Bing Jervis (1909-1980), New York, NY likely by bequest, 1959; Alexander M. Bing (1878-1959), Provincetown, MA and New York, likely by purchase, c. 1953
Robert Motherwell: Meanings of Abstraction
By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists
American Wing Rotations 2024
American Wing Rotations 2025
Gabriel, Mary. "Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art," Little, Brown and Company, 2017, p. 243.
Inscribed: Signature, recto, l/r: "Hartigan '53"