There Were No Flowers Tonight

1929

Ivan Albright

Painter, American, 1897 - 1983

Ivan Albright

Attributed to

A ballerina sitting on an unseen seat bending over to remove one worn, gray ballet slipper nearly fills this vertical painting. The woman has pale skin but her face, hands, legs, and the elbow we see are pink. She sits almost facing our right with her right leg out to brace her weight. She rests her left arm, farther from us, on her other knee as she reaches down to untie the slipper with her other hand. She has a cut or a sore on the back of her resting hand between the pointer and middle finger knuckles. The knee-length tutu shimmers between eucalyptus green and nearly white, and the lower hem is edged in dingy lace. Her bodice is rose pink, and the zipper on the side facing us has come partially undone. Her breasts hang heavy in the low-cut neckline. She turns her face to our left to look down in that direction. Scraggly tendrils of her reddish-brown hair fall around her face, and a band of red flowers are pinned along the right side of her head. Her forehead is heavily lined, and she has deep bags under her eyes. Her skin is mottled, and a crescent of her red lips are visible below her prominent nose. The background is dark bottle green, and the floor is streaked with yellow and dark green. A pink flower on the floor is near the lower left corner. The woman is lit starkly from our left, and the contours of her body against the dark background are lined with lighter aqua. The artist signed the lower left corner, “IVAN LE LORRAINE ALBRIGHT.”
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Originally titled “Midnight,” There Were No Flowers Tonight was painted in Laguna Beach, California, in 1929. Its morbid imagery is the product of Ivan Albright’s obsession with beauty and decay, which compelled him to represent the ravages of age on the human form with uncompromising detail. This image of a ballerina well past her prime was painted during a trying time in Albright’s own life, when he mistakenly believed that he was suffering from a terminal illness.

Albright’s penchant for representing the processes of aging and decomposition in his meticulous, magic realist style often elicited negative responses from critics. This was especially so for his representations of women, which one writer denounced as “a horrible satire on the female species, painted by a bitter misanthrope.” Despite the challenges of its difficult subject matter and style, There Were No Flowers Tonight garnered significant attention for the artist and represents an important turning point in Albright’s career.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Robert H. and Clarice Smith

  • Dimensions

    overall: 122.7 x 76.9 cm (48 5/16 x 30 1/4 in.)
    framed: 144.8 x 98.7 x 5.1 cm (57 x 38 7/8 x 2 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1972.7.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: There Were No Flowers Tonight, 1929

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.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1897-1983], until at least 1947. Lawrence A. [b. 1925] and Barbara Fleischman, Detroit, at least by 1960, to 1965.[1] (Kennedy Galleries, New York); purchased 24 March 1967 by Robert H. and Clarice Smith, Washington, D.C.; gift 1972 to NGA.
[1] The artist showed the painting in exhibitions through 1947, and the painting was lent by the Fleischmans to exhibitions between 1960 and 1965.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1930

  • [Albright exhibition], Walden Gallery, Palmolive Building, Chicago, 1930.[1]

1931

  • Paintings by George and Martin Baer and Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, Art Institute of Chicago, July-October 1931, no catalogue, as Midnight.[2]

  • Thirty-Fifth Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago, January-March 1931, no. 5, repro., as Midnight.

1935

  • 130th Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1935, no. 254, as There Were No Flowers To-nite.

1943

  • American Realists and Magic Realists, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; San Francisco Musuem of Art; Art Gallery of Toronto; Cleveland Museum of Art, 1943-1944, no. 27.

1945

  • First Joint Exhibition: The Albright Twins, Associated American Artists Galleries, New York, 1945, no. 14.

1947

  • 121st Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, January 1947, no. 72.

  • The Twentieth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., March-May 1947, no. 200, repro.

1960

  • American Painting 1760-1960, A Selection of 125 Paintings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleischman, Detroit, Milwaukee Art Center, 1960, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1964

  • Ivan Albright: A Retrospective Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1964-1965, no. 7, repro., as There Were No Flowers Tonight (Midnight).

  • American Painting 1765-1963, Selections From the Lawrence A. and Barbara Fleischman Collection of American Art, University of Arizona Art Gallery, Tucson, 1964, no. 1, repro.

1982

  • Solitude: Inner Visions in American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1982, no. 17, repro.

1984

  • Museo de los Museos: arte universal a través de los tiempos, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1984, no. 44, repro.

1993

  • Extended loan for use by Ambassador Madeleine Albright, Representative of the U.S. to the United Nations, office at the U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C., 1993-1997.

1997

  • Ivan Albright, Art Institute of Chicago; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1997, no. 15, color repro., as There Were No Flowers Tonight (Midnight).

2010

  • Against the Grain: Modernism in the Midwest, Massillon Museum, Ohio; Riffe Gallery, Columbus; Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, Portsmouth; Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, 2010-2011, no. 13, repro. (shown only in Massillon, Portsmouth, and West Bend).

2011

  • Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties, Brooklyn Museum; Dallas Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011-2012, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 68.

Bibliography

1978

  • Croydon, Michael. Ivan Albright. New York, 1978: 46, color repro. 26.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 19, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: color repro. 220, 227-228.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 20, repro.

1996

  • Southgate, M. Therese. "The Cover: Ivan Albright, There Were No Flowers Tonight." Journal of the American Medical Association 276, no. 15 (16 October 1996): cover, 3223, color repro.

1997

  • Rossen, Susan F., ed. Ivan Albright. Exh. cat. Art Institute of Chicago, 1997: no. 15, 26, color repro.

Inscriptions

lower left: IVAN LE LORRAINE ALBRIGHT

Wikidata ID

Q20192798

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