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Geometric shapes and pieces of fruit in vivid yellow, red, midnight blue, cool green, and orange form a rough pyramid on a mottled brown surface or table in this vertical, abstracted still life painting. The objects and surrounding patterns are painted with visible, textured brushstrokes. The tallest shape is a crimson-red cylinder in the center. In front of and just to the right of the red cylinder is a corn-yellow cylinder topped with a semi-circle resembling a mushroom cap. Next is a red orb, perhaps an apple, sitting in a half-moon shaped, blue and black dish or cup with a yellow footed stem. Balancing out these descending forms are two half-circles that flare to our left from behind the cylinders. The upper disk has a yellow fish-scale pattern against teal blue, and the other lightens from lime green at the center to lemon yellow at the perimeter. Four pieces of fruit are in front of the pyramid. From left to right are a half an oval melon with a dark blue skin and pink flesh, a cluster of acid-green grapes, a pear painted in cobalt blue and bright yellow, and an orange piece of fruit. Slices of pattern cut diagonally across the background and overlap. At the front, turquoise flowers with yellow centers are arranged against coral pink and black lines. Other slices have stripes, polka dots, or more flowers in tones of bright yellow, cranberry red, carnation pink, and sky blue. A vertical band up the right edge of the composition has pale blue dots against celestial blue.

Margaret Burroughs

Still Life, 1943

Not on View

Medium

oil on compressed particle board

Dimensions

overall: 50.48 × 39.37 cm (19 7/8 × 15 1/2 in.)

framed: 60.96 × 49.85 × 3.49 cm (24 × 19 5/8 × 1 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (The Evans-Tibbs Collection, Gift of Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr.)

Accession Number

2015.19.206

Artists / Makers

Margaret Burroughs (painter) American, 1915 - 2010

Image Use

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Provenance

Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr. [1952-1997], Washington, possibly by 1987, certainly by 1989;[1] gift 1996 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art.

[1] The painting was lent to the exhibition of the Tibbs collection that began its multi-year tour in January 1989, and was possibly lent to a 1987 exhibition that included works from his collection. A label from The Veerhoff Galleries in Washington is on the reverse of the frame; this is possibly where Tibbs purchased the painting.

Associated Names

Corcoran Gallery of Art
Tibbs, Thurlow Evans, Jr.

Exhibition History

1982: Margaret Burroughs, Marion Perkins: A Retrospective, The Evans-Tibbs Collection, Washington, 18 September - 30 November 1982, no. 4, as Abstract Still Life, dated 1944.

1987: Possibly Collectors' Choices: The Art of Collecting - An Exhibition of Art Chosen from the Evans-Tibbs Collection, the Hewitt Collection, the Somerhill Gallery, Art Museum of North Carolina Central University, Durham, 1987, no. 1 (list from the Evans-Tibbs Collection).

1989: African-American Artists, 1880-1987: Selections from the Evans-Tibbs Collection, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, more than twenty venues, January 1989 - November 1992, no. 18, fig. 30.

2001: Celebrating the Legacy: African American Art from the Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 10 January - 25 February 2002, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

2011: Cash, Sarah, ed. Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Washington, 2011: 291, repro.