Grace Hartigan

Red Bowl

1953

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Grace Hartigan

Red Bowl

Grace Hartigan

Red Bowl

1953

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.

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

"New Paintings: George Hartigan," Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Feb 2-20, 1954.

Darsie Alexander, "Robert Motherwell: Meanings of Abstraction,"Baltimore Museum of Art, May 20, 2006 - July 30, 2006.

Virginia Anderson, The Baltimore Museum of Art, "By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists," October 6, 2019 — July 5, 2020

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.

Inscribed: Signature, recto, l/r: "Hartigan '53"