Mountain Bird Maru

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Mountain Bird Maru

Artist Ralston Crawford (American, 1906-1978)

Date1947-1949

DimensionsPainting: 28 × 36 in. (71.1 × 91.4 cm)
Frame: 36 × 43 3/4 × 3 in. (91.4 × 111.1 × 7.6 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineMuseum Purchase Fund

Object number

1950.265

Not on View

Label Text“I am never concerned with a pictorial logic to the exclusion of feeling…The genesis of my pictures varies greatly. They are complete when they express a synthesis of my emotion and ideas.” –Ralston Crawford Though in the 1930s he developed a Precisionist style of crisp-edged compositions suggestive of an urban industrial landscape, by the 1940s Ralston Crawford moved toward a bold abstraction that still referred in title and form to observable subjects. However, as he expressed, “I don’t feel obligated to reveal the forms. They may be totally absent to the viewer of the work, or even to myself, but what there is, however abstract, grows out of something I have seen.”Published ReferencesFreeman, R., Ralston Crawford, University of Alabama, 1953, p. 45.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, p. 37, pl. 249.

Exhibition HistorySt. Paul, University of Minnesota Gallery, Ralston Crawford, 1949, no. 41.

Baton Rouge, Lousiana State University, Ralston Crawford, 1950, no. 11.

Toledo Museum of Art, 37th Annual, 1950, no. 13.

Toledo Museum of Art, Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings Acquired by the Toledo Museum 1901-1951, 1951.

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, New Acquisitions U.S.A., 1952.

Duluth, Tweed Gallery, University of Minnesota, Ralston Crawford, Retrospective Exhibition, 1961, no. 14, repr.

Champaign, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Ralston Crawford, 1961, no. 14, repr.