The White Clown

1929

Walt Kuhn

Painter, American, 1877 - 1949

A stocky, muscular man with his face painted white and wearing a skin-tight, oyster-white costume sits on a wooden chair, leaning forward toward us with his elbows resting on his knees in this vertical painting. The man nearly fills the canvas, and his feet are cropped by the bottom edge. His body is angled slightly to our left with his knees spread wide, but he looks out at us. He wears a pale, beige-colored cap and his cream-white bodysuit may have a loosely painted, wide collar. His nearly straight eyebrows and closed lips are painted black, and his narrow gray eyes are outlined in black, against the white oval of his painted face. His clasped hands, ears, and his skin visible along the edges of his makeup are pale peach. The background is earth brown. The artist signed and dated the work with red paint between one of the man’s legs and the leg of the chair, near the lower center: “Walt Kuhn 1929.”
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Walt Kuhn was known for his depictions of many types of circus entertainers, but he was particularly interested in clowns. The White Clown is arguably Kuhn’s most famous painting, and the work that firmly established his reputation at the age of 51. Part of a long artistic tradition of images of performers, the figure’s angular, geometric, and monumental form recalls ancient Greek sculptures of athletes. Kuhn had met Pablo Picasso in Paris during the summer of 1925. The White Clown evokes the Spanish artist’s many images of the circus and is stylistically similar to his classicizing period of the early 1920s. Kuhn’s clown paintings have autobiographical implications as well. The artist specified that a later painting—Kansas (1932, Ebsworth Collection)—be posthumously renamed Portrait of the Artist as a Clown. It has also been suggested that the intense facial expression of the 1948 work Chico in a Top Hat (Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York) portended the artist’s mental breakdown that year.

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: The White Clown, 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 [1877-1949]; his estate; (Maynard Walker Gallery, New York); purchased 27 May 1957 by W. Averell [1891-1986] and Marie N. [1903-1970] Harriman, New York;[1] W. Averell Harriman Foundation, New York; gift 1972 to NGA.
[1] According to Harriman collection records in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1929

  • Paintings by Nineteen Living Americans, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1929-1930, no. 50 (two catalogues, one with repro.).

1930

  • Exhibition of Paintings by Walt Kuhn, Marie Harriman Gallery, New York, 1930, no. 1, repro.

1931

  • Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 1931, no. 29.

1933

  • Paintings by Walt Kuhn, City Art Museum, St. Louis, 1933, no catalogue.

1934

  • Eleven Contemporary American Painters, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Atkins Museum of Fine Arts [now The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art], Kansas City, Missouri, 1934, no catalogue.

1935

  • Walt Kuhn Paintings, Dayton Art Institute, Ohio, May 1935, no catalogue.

  • Walt Kuhn, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Ohio, April 1935, no catalogue.

1953

  • Clowns, travelling exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 14 venues, 1953-1955, no catalogue.

1958

  • Walt Kuhn, 1880-1949, Albany Institute of History and Art, 1958, no. 4, repro. on cover.

1959

  • American Painting and Sculpture [American National Exhibition], Sokolinski Park, Moscow, July-September 1959, no. 5, repro.

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October-November 1959, unnumbered catalogue.

1960

  • Walt Kuhn 1877-1949: A Memorial Exhibition, Cincinnati Art Museum, October-November 1960, no. 40, color repro.

  • Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture Collected by Yale Alumni: An Exhibition, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, May-June 1960, no. 135, repro.

1961

  • Exhibition of the Marie and Averell Harriman Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1961, unnumbered catalogue, repro. 45.

1966

  • Seven Decades 1895-1965: Crosscurrents in Modern Art, Public Education Association, New York, April-May 1966, no. 155, repro.

  • 125 Years of New York Painting and Sculpture, New York State Fair Exposition, Syracuse, August-September 1966 [according to donor collection records].

  • Art of the United States: 1670-1966, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September-November 1966, no. 164.

  • Painter of Vision: A Retrospective Exhibition of Oils, Watercolors and Drawings by Walt Kuhn, 1877-1949, The University of Arizona Art Gallery, Tucson, February-March 1966: no. 53, repro.

1967

  • Walt Kuhn 1877-1949, Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, 1967, unnumbered, frontispiece.

1969

  • Spring Exhibition, National Art Museum of Sport, Madison Square Garden Center, Gallery of Art, New York, 1969 [according to donor collection records].

1974

  • Selected American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, University Center Gallery, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, 1974, no catalogue.

1978

  • Walt Kuhn: A Classic Revival, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Wichita Art Museum; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 1978-1979, no. 10, repro.

1980

  • La Pintura de Los Estados Unidos de Museos de la Ciudad de Washington, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1980-1981, no. 54, color repro.

1981

  • Center Ring: The Artist, Two Centuries of Circus Art, Milwaukee Art Museum; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; New York State Museum, Albany; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1981-1982, no. 55, repro.

1992

  • Walt Kuhn: American Master, The Museum of Art of Ogunquit, Maine, 1992, no. D-31, repro.

1993

  • Extended loan for use by Ambassador Pamela Harriman, U.S. Embassy residence, Paris, France, 1993-1997.

1997

  • Extended loan for use by Ambassador Felix Rohatyn, U.S. Embassy residence, Paris, 1997-1998.

2001

  • Images from the World Between: The Circus in Twentieth-Century American Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota; Austin Museum of Art, 2001-2002, fig. 31.

Bibliography

1930

  • Kootz, Samuel. Modern American Painters. New York, 1930: pl. 31.

1931

  • Collins, M. Rose, and Olive L. Riley. Art Appreciation. New York, 1930: 126, no. 150.

1932

  • Cheney, Sheldon. A Primer of Modern Art. 7th ed. revised and enlarged. New York, 1932: 236.

1939

  • Watson, Forbes. American Painting Today. Washington, 1939: 87.

1940

  • Bird, Paul. Fifty Paintings by Walt Kuhn. New York, 1940: 8, repro.

1978

  • Adams, Philip Rhys. Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work. Columbus, OH, 1978: 117-119, 255, no. 249, repro.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 191, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 225, repro. 228.

1983

  • Brown, Milton W. One Hundred Masterpieces of American Painting from Public Collections in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., 1983: 124-125, color repro.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 574, no. 877, color repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 222, repro.

  • Walt Kuhn, American Master. Exh. cat. The Museum of Art of Ogunquit, Ogunquit, Maine, 1992: 30, 35, no. D31, repro. 30.

1999

  • Yeide, Nancy H. "The Marie Harriman Gallery." Archives of American Art Journal 39, nos. 1-2 (1999): 2-11, repro.

2001

  • Gustafson, Donna. Images from the World Between: The Circus in Twentieth-Century Art. Exh. cat. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota; Austin Museum of Art, Cambridge, MA, 2001-2002. Cambridge, MA, 2001: 29, repro., 37, fig. 31.

Inscriptions

lower center: Walt Kuhn / 1929

Wikidata ID

Q20192805

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