Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 477
w127
w127
Beside the Sea No. 1
1962
Oil on paper
29 x 23 in. (73.7 x 58.4 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, lower center: Motherwell
provenance
Sophie and Boris Leavitt, Hanover, Pa.,
1964; [Christie’s, New York, November
20, 1996, lot 8, illus.]; Mr. and Mrs.
George W. Couch III, Pebble Beach,
Calif., 1996
Recto, lower right: 1
solo exhibitions
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York,
December 1962, cat. no. 24, illus. n.p.
Verso [circled ] (on backing board):
Photo #356 [oil] “Beside the Sea, #1”
Robert Motherwell 1962
New Gallery, Charles Hayden Memorial
Library, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, 1963.
artist’s studio number
p62-5108
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Robert Motherwell, September 1965
(traveling), New York, cat. no. 63, illus.
p. 32; Amsterdam, cat. no. 56, illus.
n.p.; Essen, cat. no. 56; Turin, cat.
no. 56, illus. p. 104 (pl. 44/B).
present owner
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. George W.
Couch III, Pebble Beach, Calif.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City,
1975, cat. no. 22.
group exhibitions
Nassau County Museum of Fine Art,
Roslyn Harbor, N.Y., 1981, cat. no. 58,
illus. p. 58, erroneously as By the Sea #1.
references
Fried 1967, illus. sec. 2, p. 4, as Beside the
Sea; Arnason 1977b, illus. n.p. (pl. 135);
Arnason 1982, illus. p. 147 (pl. 171);
Motherwell in Arnason 1982, p. 147.
comments
Motherwell began his Beside the Sea
series in Provincetown during the summer of 1962, working in both oil and
acrylic on paper. This series marked his
first sustained use of acrylic copolymer
emulsion paint; roughly one-third of
the 1962 Beside the Sea paintings were
done in acrylic. (In 1962 Motherwell
compiled a list of works in which he
specified the mediums used in each
work in the series; Dedalus Foundation
Archives). Some works that originated
as part of this series eventually became
collages (see c132–c135). Motherwell
also explored similar imagery in paintings done on canvas (see p240–p245).
He would return to this motif again in
1966 and 1967, when he created both
drawings and paintings on paper in the
Beside the Sea series that generally
continued the numbering of the 1962
series (see w212 and w222). In 1968,
he began a second numbered series of
paintings on paper also titled Beside
the Sea (see the Comments for w254).
Motherwell later described the
genesis of the series as follows: “For
years my summer studio has been on
the bay in Provincetown . . . at high tide
the sea in a high wind breaks against
the bulkhead in violent spray. In the
Beside the Sea series, I made the painted
p a i n tin gs on paper and paperbo ard
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