Essex and Hester (Red)

1958

Grace Hartigan

Painter, American, 1922 - 2008

Scrawled and energetic lines and color are spaced across a scarlet-red background in this horizontal, abstract painting. Textured brushstrokes are visible throughout. From left to right across the top half of the composition are patches of smoke gray, traffic-cone orange, emerald green, and violet purple. An ultramarine and cobalt-blue patch is near the bottom left corner, and smudges of orange and vivid yellow are along the edge at the center and near the bottom right corner of the painting. Curving black lines slice and backtrack around the bottom right quadrant of the composition, and more black encloses or crosses some of the patches of color. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “Hartigan 58.”
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On View

NGA, East Building, EU-407-B, N

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 134.6 x 211.5 cm (53 x 83 1/4 in.)
    framed: 137.5 x 214.6 x 3.8 cm (54 1/8 x 84 1/2 x 1 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1996.81.3

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Gres Gallery, Washington, D.C.); Dr. Winston Price, Baltimore; purchased 1962 by Robert and Jane Meyerhoff, Phoenix, Maryland;[1] gift 1996 to NGA.
[1] Provenance from The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: 1945 to 1995, Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1996: 240.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1958

  • Annual Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1958-1959, no. 90.

1959

  • [exhibition], Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, 1959.

1964

  • Selections from the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, Goucher College, Towson, Maryland, 1964.

1966

  • Selections from the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1966.

1973

  • Selections from the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1973.

1996

  • The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: 1945 to 1995, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1996, no. 30, color repro.

2009

  • The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2009-2010, pl. 41.

2014

  • Modernism from the National Gallery of Art: The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum, 2014, pl. 26.

Bibliography

1996

  • The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: 1945 to 1995. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1996: no. 30.

Inscriptions

lower right: Hartigan 58

Wikidata ID

Q20195019

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