Wright Auction

Girl with Balloon is not a title that I find in my records, which does not mean the painting is not authentic, but does require an analysis of style and subject matter. It was sold at Hindman Auctions in 2011 to the current owner. 

Girl with Balloon is an image of a woman seated in the corner of a room, holding the string from a green balloon in her right hand and stroking a black cat that sits in her lap with her left. Although balloons are not as ubiquitous in her work as are stoneware vases, eggs or shells, there are several references to paintings titled Balloon in her records. * The other elements in the painting are familiar from other paintings by Abercrombie.

The early 1950s were a very productive period for Abercrombie as she needed to generate income after her divorce and marriage to her second husband in the late 1940s, who, unlike her first husband was not a dependable provider. She was also enjoying a great deal of popularity—in 1952 alone, she had five solo exhibitions, including one at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery in New York, an important outpost of Magic Realism. At this time, her friend John Wilde counseled her to paint more detailed and clear images, an effort to counter the unevenness that was characteristic of her production. Girl with Balloon emerged in this context: a sprint to produce enough work for her upcoming shows and her need for income along with an effort to maintain a high level of quality. Even in her own assessment, the latter was not always possible.

When we analyze the style of the painting, both the haste with which it was produced as well as the effort to paint with clarity and precision is evident. Abercrombie was very skillful at painting believable inanimate objects, a result of the art classes she took at University of Illinois (some of her very careful and proficient studies for these classes are in the Illinois State Museum in Springfield); this did not extend to humans or animals however. In the beaux arts pedagogy which was still employed in the 1920s (and even later in many places), studying the human figure was the summit of art studies. Inanimate objects were mastered first, followed by drawing copies of Greek and Roman sculpture and, finally, learning from a human model. Abercrombie does not seem to have made it to life drawing class, but she found ways of camouflaging her clumsiness in representing humans by reducing them to flat figures, often seen in profile, which are abundant in her work. She almost never painted seated figures, which were more difficult to doctor. 

The dreaminess of the figure and the whimsy of the balloon, the sweet gesture and connection with the cat shows us the soft side of Abercrombie, perhaps painted quickly on a good day.

Abercrombie includes a cat, her alter ego, which is seated on the figure’s lap. But this cat is far from even her usual simplified cats, stylized and flattened much like her human forms. This one is an almost unrecognizable and distorted animal, possibly because of the impossibility of painting one of the stylized silhouettes that she ordinarily used on the lap of the figure. These anomalies of style are explicable as shortcomings in Abercrombie’s skill as well as haste in painting. 

At the same time, there are things that seem consistent with Abercrombie’s style from this period, particularly the simplicity of the composition and the color scheme. The painting can be compared to Pink Lady (1947, location unknown), a work of about the same size that belonged to Frank Sandiford, Abercrombie’s second husband. It remained in his family after his death and there is no doubt about its authenticity. In Pink Lady the figure stands in an ascetic landscape with a single leafless tree, wearing a similar dress to that in Girl with Balloon. Both paintings have a similar grey background despite their different settings. Most interesting, the faces of the figures in both are kind of greyish, with very dark hair. Girl with Balloon has the bangs characteristic of Abercrombie’s self-portraits from the early 1940s on, while Pink Lady’s hair is pulled back, making her much more formidable than the former. Abercrombie’s self-portraits range from some early sweet and soft images to those that depict her as a fearsome witch, a stern and authoritarian queen, or a rather ordinary woman. While Pink Lady reaches out with a welcoming gesture, her face screams witch. Girl with Balloon, with her downcast eyes and non-threatening pose is in the tradition of the kinder, gentler woman. 

The dreaminess of the figure and the whimsy of the balloon, the sweet gesture and connection with the cat shows us the soft side of Abercrombie, perhaps painted quickly on a good day. In my opinion, this is an authentic painting by Abercrombie.

*Abercrombie used the title Balloon several times. The single painting that I can associate with certainty with the title Balloon, however, is an image in which a hot air balloon appears.

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.