Mr. Barney A. Ebsworth

Ebsworth Foundation, Barney A.

American, 1934 - 2018

Explore Selected Works

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”
Charles Sheeler, Classic Landscape, 1931, oil on canvas, Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth, 2000.39.2

Classic Landscape

Charles Sheeler · 1931 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2000.39.2

Painted mostly with areas of flat, vibrant color, eight people or animals, or possibly hybrids, span and fill this horizontal, abstracted composition. The people and creatures’ features are simplified and stylized into bold forms. To our left, a winged woman holds out her arms and grips an uprooted tree, which creates a diagonal up the center of the composition. The woman has fire engine-red hair and grayish-green shadows on her pale, peach face. Her royal-blue dress has a low, sweetheart neckline and her breasts are outlined in a thick black line. The tree she holds has three roots and one branch, which holds a round disk covered in colorful dots, like a nonpareil candy. In front of her, a lemon-yellow person overlaps or becomes a pink, lizard-like creature. The yellow being has red eyes and nostrils, a black cap or hair, and black outlines around the eyes and nose. The creature at the back end has wide red lips, a red-rimmed, black eye, the suggestion of black hair, and red, presumably blood, trickling out of its parted mouth. Closer to us and seen from the waist up, a person with red eyes and lips, brown skin, black hair, and a pink bodice stands with arms overhead, as if holding opposite elbows. The eyes and mouth make wide-open Os. On the right half of the picture, a scarlet-red person with its lower jaw drooping open sits on a white form like a ghost, and plunges one hand, wrist-deep, into the ghost-like form’s mouth. The white creature has red eyes, blue hair, and lies on its back. A brown creature with sharp teeth and a red tongue and eyes reaches up from the bottom edge of the canvas. One clawed hand clutches the white figure’s face over the left ear and the other nails or talons snag onto the red creature’s knee. The final creature has red lips, nose, eyes, hands, and yellow teeth, and it lurks in the background above and behind the red and white pair. Resembling an octopus, it has two arms and three legs, and is mottled with violet purple and carnation pink. The areas around and behind all the figures are expanses of grass green, bubblegum pink, butter yellow, blue, dark gray, or white to suggest a landscape.
Bob Thompson, Tree, 1962, oil on canvas, Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth, 2000.39.3

Tree

Bob Thompson · 1962 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2000.39.3

This vertical, abstract painting is made up of overlapping, intersecting geometric forms in shades of gray, cobalt blue, white, and black. The largest form is made up of a pair of black bands, running side by side, that extend up from the lower left corner to curve to the right off the edge of the composition beneath the upper right corner. The bands are shaded with pale gray along the bottom edges. In front of that curving black form, a vivid white, narrow triangle like a blade cuts into the composition from near the lower left corner, and it stretches halfway across the painting at an upward angle. The bottom edge of the triangle is painted nickel gray, suggesting that it has another facet in a three-dimensional form. A vertical shaft running behind the curving form is black at the top and cobalt blue where it is nestled under the curving form. The background lightens from steel gray at the corners to brighter white near the center.
Georgia O'Keeffe, Black White and Blue, 1930, oil on canvas, Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth, 1998.93.1

Black White and Blue

Georgia O'Keeffe · 1930 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1998.93.1

Arthur Dove, Moon, 1935, oil on canvas, Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth, 2000.39.1

Moon

Arthur Dove · 1935 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2000.39.1

Pat Steir, Curtain Waterfall, 1991, oil on canvas, Gift of Barney A. Ebsworth, 1998.97.1

Curtain Waterfall

Pat Steir · 1991 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1998.97.1

Pat Steir, Or, 1973, oil, graphite, colored pencil, and rabbit-skin glue on canvas, Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth, 1997.86.1

Or

Pat Steir · 1973 · oil, graphite, colored pencil, and rabbit-skin glue on canvas ·  Accession ID  1997.86.1