Meadow I

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Meadow I

Artist George Tooker (American, 1920-2011)

Date1960-1961

DimensionsH: 20 in. (50.8 cm); W: 28 in. (71.1 cm) (Dealer)

MediumEgg Tempera on gesso panel

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineGift of the Woodward Foundation and purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, by exchange

Object number

2007.47

Not on View

DescriptionImage is a landscape with two figures in the foreground - one male, one female. The male is kneeling on the right with his head bowed and his hands in his lap. The female is lying to the male figure's right with here eyes closed. She is leaning back as if lying on the ground. They are both wearing simple clothes of white, blue and dark creamy yellow. In the background on the left is a field of amber grasses and on the right a grove of trees (no leaves are visible, only trunks).

Label TextPainting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings. — George Tooker Though best known for anxiety-filled images of modern city dwellers seemingly trapped in office cubicle boxes or subway station mazes, George Tooker gives Meadow I a rural setting and a timeless quality. A memorial to his mother, the painting is suffused with melancholy. The reclining (dead?) woman resembles Renaissance paintings of the Madonna collapsed in grief at the death of her son Jesus on the cross. The kneeling man in his laborer’s clothes is a vigilant and deeply saddened Joseph. The comparison to 15th-century painting is apt; Tooker was influenced by the Renaissance masters, particularly Piero della Francesca (about 1410/20–1492). He even used the anachronistic egg tempera technique, much favored by Italian Renaissance artists, which traditionally involved painting with egg yolk thinned with water and mixed with powdered pigment. It was a painstaking process—the paint dried quickly, so had to be applied steadily. Tooker used a sable brush to apply small, measured strokes of paint to create an image that usually took months to complete.Published ReferencesGarver, Thomas, George Tooker, San Francisco, Pomegranate Art Books, 1992, p. 100, ill.Exhibition HistoryNational Academy Museum-NYC (National Academy of Design, NYC, New York, N.Y. 2008-09.

Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio. 2009.

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. 2009.