Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 425
w15
references
Montclair Art Museum Bulletin 1974,
n.p., cover illus.; Montclair Art
Museum 1977, illus. p. 200 (cat. 241);
Mattison 1987, illus. p. 173 (fig. 68).
comments
This work is very closely related to
a 1947 painting on an unusual,
construction-like support of paperboard and wood, Ulysses (p69). The
inscription “1947–51” on the verso of
this work suggests that it was started in
1947 and reworked in 1951. But it is
also possible that it was a 1951 reprise
of the 1947 composition, this time
on a more traditional support. On the
recto of this work, at the lower center,
Motherwell has incised the letters Uly
in a flowing script, apparently meant as
the first three letters of “Ulysses.”
This second version of Ulysses
makes explicit what is not immediately
clear in the looser brushwork of the
1947 original: that the figure in both
works appears to be wearing a bronze
helmet.
In his response to a 1974 questionnaire about this painting from the
Montclair Art Museum, Motherwell
wrote, “Subject is imaginary. For the
artist Ulysses symbolizes an odyssee
[sic] towards self-realisation and also
has to the artist something of the horror
and fright of the Greeks captured by
Cyclops” (see “Writings by the Artist,”
in the Bibliography).
w16
New Gallery, Bennington College, Vt.,
1959, cat. no. 14, as Pregnant Nude
Holding Child.
w16
Pregnant Woman Holding
Child
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Robert Motherwell:Works on Paper,
September 1965 (circulating).
Alternative Titles: The Artist’s Wife
Pregnant, Holding Another Child;
Pregnant Nude Holding Child
1953
Casein and ink on paper
10 x 8½ in. (25.4 x 21.6 cm)
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
1967 (circulating), Buenos Aires, cat.
no. 2; Caracas, cat. no. 57, illus. n.p.;
Bogotá, cat. no. 57; Mexico City, cat.
no. 2, illus. p. 26.
inscriptions
Recto, upper right: RM 53
Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1976
(traveling), cat. no. 15, color illus. p. 67,
illus. p. 102.
artist’s studio number
d53-1533
present owner
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C. The Nancy Lee and Perry Bass
Fund, 1999.55.3
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991; National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999
solo exhibitions
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, May
1957, cat. no. 1, as The Artist’s Wife
Pregnant, Holding Another Child.
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de
Paris, 1977, illus. n.p.
William Benton Museum of Art,
University of Connecticut, Storrs, 1979,
cat. no. 3 (brochure); cat. no. 3
(catalogue).
Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, 1979,
cat. no. 10, illus. n.p.; illus. n.p. (in
exhibition).
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
1987.
p a i n tin gs on paper and paperbo ard
413
