Wright Auction

Expertise by Dr. Susan Weininger

Sunset is a painting with Abercrombie’s familiar alter ego facing an owl in the foreground of an austere landscape, empty but for a small blue tent in the background. A reddish sun sinks to the horizon; the sky is empty aside from a shred of reddish cloud. My records do not have a definitive match for the painting, nor any painting called Sunset, but the records make reference to a painting Abercrombie titled Owl and Me, as well as one she called Fantasy (me and owl), both c. 1954. Fantasy includes measurements that differ from Sunset, which excludes it, and there is no information about Owl and Me aside from Abercrombie’s notation that it was sold to “Castleton” for $50. Since Abercrombie was very productive in 1954 and was also still rather meticulous about recording her work, it seems as if Owl and Me might be the painting now identified as Sunset. Even if it is not, an examination of the subject and style provides a strong argument for the authenticity of the work. It was sold at Treadway Toomey Auctions in 2004 to a private collector and again there in 2012 to the current owner.

In the painting a girlish, reserved Abercrombie, hiding her very delicate branch behind her back, approaches the owl to gain control over the wise and powerful animal, to incorporate those qualities she needs to live her life, but the owl is not cooperating.

Abercrombie began to include owls in her work in the early 1940s and never stopped. There are innumerable examples, from solitary owls to owls playing a secondary role in much larger and complicated compositions. The owl in Sunset is related to a theme Abercrombie addressed several times in the mid-1940s in which she is training a group of owls using a delicate whip-like device (Owl Trainer [School for Owls], 1945, private collection; Owl Trainer 2, 1947, Private Collection). While there is only one owl in Sunset, the figure looks demurely out at the viewer while hiding a delicate tree branch behind her back, preparing to begin the "training." By this time, Abercrombie had long employed the owl (as well as many other things) as a personal emblem, sometimes as a surrogate, alluding to the relationship between the witch (a frequent alter-ego for Abercrombie) and the owl as well as its association both with wisdom and power. The owl, too, looks directly at the viewer. It is notable that in the two owl trainer paintings mentioned above the owls look directly at the viewer although the female figure faces them directly—perhaps they are not amenable to being trained, which Abercrombie makes clear in this later version.

The tent, too, is seen in Abercrombie’s work from about the time of her divorce and second marriage in 1948 (Between Two Camps, 1948, Illinois State Museum, Springfield, refers explicitly to the transition in her life). From early in her career, Abercrombie made many images of rooms, sometimes including a figure and sometimes empty, always austere and sparsely furnished, a metaphor for her internal state. The tent represents a more ephemeral enclosure, lacking the solidity of a room, and may allude to augmented feelings of loneliness and emptiness. Although she remained devoted to Frank, his shortcomings as a husband manifested early in their marriage, adding to her own insecurities.

Time is passing, the sun is setting, and the owl trainer is left without success.

In the painting, a girlish, reserved Abercrombie, hiding her very delicate branch behind her back, approaches the owl to gain control over the wise and powerful animal, to incorporate those qualities she needs to live her life, but the owl is not cooperating. The tent in the distance alludes to her feelings of frailty, which might be overcome with the powers of the owl. Time is passing, the sun is setting, and the owl trainer is left without success.

The composition is deceptively simple, as is typical of Abercrombie. Arranging the figure and owl on the same plane in the foreground, but connecting the figure to the tent and the owl to the setting sun in space, creates a balanced yet unceasingly interesting organization that is continually thought-provoking. Using ordinary identifiable elements to create an image of mystery and wit is quintessential Abercrombie; it keeps the viewer coming back for more.

Broadly considered, Chicago Modernism includes works in a range of styles covering all manner of themes from the 1890s through the mid-20th century. From portraiture to landscapes, from still lifes to abstractions, and more, artists who were active in Chicago prior to the turn of the 20th century up through World War II helped to define the emerging city to itself and the world outside. This period featured notable artists producing finely executed and innovative examples of Impressionism, Realism, Abstraction, Regionalism, Surrealism, and Magical Realism. While connected to the major artistic currents in cultural centers like New York City and Paris, Chicago Modernism was able to develop in a relatively organic and original fashion given the Midwest’s geographic isolation and its tendency to be sometimes overlooked.

Following the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which certainly put the city on the map, in a literal and figurative sense, Impressionism, and its variants, began to take hold in Chicago, as it had already on the East Coast. When the modern era dawned, much of the Impressionist artwork done in Chicago contrasted rural and urban life or manifested as formal portraiture. Some of the key figures of this time were Oliver Dennett Grover, Adam Emory Albright, Frederick Fursman, Pauline Palmer, Frank C. Peyraud, Walter Krawiec, Carl Krafft, Karl Albert Buehr, and Alfred Juergens. The early decades of the 20th century also saw increased immigration to the United States, in particular, by Central and Eastern Europeans. In Chicago, some of these recent arrivals, and first-generation residents, sought to preserve their heritage while capturing the urban development around them. Among these were prominent Jewish-American artists like Emil Armin and Todros Geller, who exhibited with Grant Wood at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as William Schwartz, Herman Menzel, Charles Turzak, and George Josimovich.

In the 1920s and 1930s, as the built environment of Chicago expanded, artists sought to represent this growth in their work. Many of these individuals were also employed by the New Deal-sponsored WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Art Project, which aimed to enhance the cultural fabric of America as the Great Depression threatened to fray the social contract. While there was some overlap aesthetically with work created by noted Regionalists like Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, the Chicago WPA artists operated in a variety of modes that ranged from Modernism to Art Deco to Abstraction. Around this time, the exceedingly versatile artist/designer Edgar Miller also began to make his mark on Chicago by blending elements of Arts & Crafts with Modernism in virtually every medium available.

Along with many of the European immigrants in Chicago, additional artists who were employed by the WPA to produce murals, paintings, prints, sculpture, and more included Jean Crawford Adams, Max Kahn, Eve Garrison, Roff Beman, Frances Foy, Harold Haydon, Rowena Fry, John Winters, Burton Freund, Hildreth Meiere, and countless others. The diversifying city was also represented in the WPA by artists of color like Eldzier Cortor, Archibald J. Motley, Jr., Jacob Lawrence, and Julio de Diego. Moreover, formally distinct Abstraction existed within Chicago Modernism by WPA artist Rudolph Weisenborn, as well as his student at the Art Institute of Chicago, Dorothy Stafford, along with the groundbreaking Manierre Dawson, Constructivist artist Paul Kelpe, Richard A. Florsheim, and Daniel Massen, who taught at the School of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Fantasy art afforded these [Chicago] artists a way of departing from tradition without abandoning many of its values: grounded in figuration and narrative, such art gave expression to highly personal visions in accordance with the aims of Modernism.” — Susan S. Weininger, Chicago Modern, 1893-1945: Pursuit of the New, Terra Museum of American Art, pg. 67

Modernism in Chicago further encompassed both Surrealism and Magical Realism. Given the city’s physical and cultural isolation, these fantasy-based art forms were able to flourish in unconventional, idiosyncratic ways. Gertrude Abercrombie, known as the “Queen of Bohemian Art,” was also a WPA artist, but, rather than presenting Chicago cityscapes or urban scenes, Abercrombie established herself on symbolic terrain. A master of self-portraits, Abercrombie inserted female figures into her beguiling works, but she was also fond of painting herself via owls, cats, horses, and other animals, or through elegantly simple still lifes with charged, everyday elements.

Among Abercrombie’s contemporaries were various highly skilled female artists, such as Julia Thecla, Helen Mann, and Margo Hoff, who each elaborated uniquely imaginative approaches to otherworldly effect. Macena Barton and Fritzi Brod were likewise accomplished fantasists whose work combined aspects of Expressionism and Folk Art. Milwaukee artist Karl Priebe trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and became known for his particular brand of Surrealism, with favorite subjects being portraits of Black figures he encountered teaching at a settlement house in Chicago as well as birds and exotic animals. Priebe was a longtime friend of Abercrombie's and they both were close with Wisconsin artist John Wilde—another proponent of Surrealism. Chicago native Aaron Bohrod faithfully chronicled local landscapes early in his career, before becoming adept at trompe-l’œil still lifes while an artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. By contrast, Ivan Albright—son of Impressionist painter Adam Emory Albright—applied painstaking, classical techniques to render Modernism with a macabre vision and moody palette; his dark, high-relief portraits and still lifes provide a somber, yet undeniably compelling, counter to the soft brushstrokes and light-filled canvases of the Impressionists who ushered in Chicago Modernism over a half century before.

Not only did the many incarnations of Chicago Modernism serve to produce a robust aesthetic culture by the mid-20th century, but several of the aforementioned artists proved to be key influences for later generations. Gertrude Abercrombie, Eldzier Cortor, Todros Geller, and others have benefited from posthumous critical reevaluations, in which they have become more highly regarded now than they were during their lifetimes. Thematic and stylistic traces of Modernism may also be observed in the work of some artists associated with subsequent movements, such as the Monster Roster, Hairy Who?, and Chicago Imagists, proving that art history is indeed a continuum.