Legend and Fact

1940

Willem de Kooning

Artist, American, born the Netherlands, 1904 - 1997

An anchor, a ship’s navigation instruments, broken boards, and a figurehead in the shape of a woman are arranged across a sand-colored beach in this horizontal painting. Four panels are joined to create the long composition. The objects are lit from our left, and they cast shadows that stretch across the beach. To our left, a golden-brown anchor sits upright in the sand. A blue and white rope is threaded through the ring at the top and joined to the broken paneling standing in the sand next to the anchor. Six vertical boards are joined to create the paneling, which is streaked with slate-blue and tan, and they nearly span the height of the painting. The couple of boards to our right are smashed through, creating a gaping hole. In front of the paneling, about half the height of the painting, is a gyrocompass with two nested rings around a horizontal bar across the center. It hangs from a blue rope that is looped over a bar at the top of the composition, presumably projecting into the picture from something out of our sight. An upside-down, V-shaped compass and an open book with ripped pages are propped up against the base of the paneling. Next to it, and about halfway across the painting, a fog-blue armillary sphere, also with nested rings but this time creating a grid, sits in a gold-colored stand. An eight-pointed star rises from the top of the sphere. Another blue rope droops between the paneling and a section of a wall, which spans the rightmost third of the landscape. The wall is made of horizontal wood boards, and an arched doorway is cut in the middle. The fourth and final panel is mostly filled with a wooden statue of a figurehead in the form of a woman wearing a long dress. She faces our left in profile. Her skin is ivory white on her face, chest, hands, and bare feet, and her dress is pale seafoam blue. She strides forward onto her right foot, farther from us, on a spray of carved scrolling swirls. The figurehead is propped up by a tree stump under that foot. The pointed bow of the ship is broken off behind her shoulders, so at first glance it resembles wings. A few smooth stones are scattered across the khaki-brown beach, especially around the armillary sphere. The water in the distance is represented as a band of light blue about a third of the way up the composition. Gray and oatmeal-brown clouds are streaked across the sky above. The painting is signed and dated in small white letters in the shadow cast by the figurehead: “de Kooning ’40.”
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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    duco enamel on gypsum board (marinite)

  • Credit Line

    Transferred from the Department of Commerce, Maritime Commission

  • Dimensions

    overall (four separate panels combined): 152.4 x 483.71 cm (60 x 190 7/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1971.52.1.a-d

  • Copyright

    © 1997 Willem de Kooning Revocable Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Commissioned 1940;[1] installed the same year in Norfolk, Virginia, on the American President Lines ship U.S.S. President Jackson; ship lent 1942 and later sold to the U.S. Navy as a troop carrier; U.S. Navy Reserve Fleet, Suisun Bay, Benicia, California; U.S. Maritime Commission, Department of Commerce; transferred 1971 to NGA.
[1] The commission for the mural was awarded through a juried competition open to all American artists held by the Section of Fine Arts under the Public Buildings Administration of the Federal Works Agency. The artist's contract was dated 21 June 1940.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 189, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 220, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right, far right panel: de Kooning '40

Wikidata ID

Q20193248


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