Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 524
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Beside the Sea No. 1
(Summer 1968)
1968
Acrylic and graphite on paper
30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)
InscrIptIons
Recto, lower left: RM 68
Verso (on top horizontal strainer):
R. Motherwell acrylic on Arches
“Beside the Sea #1, (Summer, 1968)”
present owner
Michael and Sonja Koerner
provenance
Private collection, 1970; Michael and
Sonja Koerner, 1973
solo exhIbItIons
Marlborough Galleria d’Arte, Rome,
1969 (traveling).
comments
In 1968 Motherwell began a second
numbered Beside the Sea series, based
on the same motifs he employed in
the 1962 pictures; see the Comments
for Beside the Sea No. 1 (w127). Whereas
512
the 1962 works had been painted primarily in oil, the 1968 series was done
in acrylic paint. Because Motherwell
began the numbering of the 1968 works
from the number 1 again, the numbers 1
to 5 were assigned to works in a Beside
the Sea series for a second time, sometimes with the parenthetical subtitle
“Summer 1968.” But the second series
was short-lived, and apart from a leap
to number 64 (see w258), in an apparent attempt to avoid further duplication
of numbers, he numbered only a few of
the later Beside the Sea pictures.
A Marlborough-Gerson Gallery
list of 1969 sales shows that a 1968
painting on paper titled Beside the Sea
No. 2 was sold in January 1969 to the
Reese Palley Gallery, Atlantic City,
New Jersey (Dedalus Foundation
Archives), but there is no further trace
of any work by this title, and no known
image of it survives.
paintings on p a p e r an d p a p e r b o a r d
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Beside the Sea No. 3
(Summer 1968)
Beside the Sea No. 4
1968
Acrylic and graphite on paper
30¼ x 22⅛ in. (76.8 x 56.2 cm)
InscrIptIons
Recto, lower left: RM 68
present owner
Portland Art Museum, Ore. Purchased
with funds from a matching grant from
the NEA and anonymous donors
provenance
Portland Art Museum, Ore., 1969
1968
Acrylic and graphite on paper
30½ x 22¼ in. (77.5 x 56.5 cm)
InscrIptIons
Recto, lower right: RM 68
artIst’s studIo number
p68-1494
present owner
Private collection
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991; private
collection, 2004
