Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 64
c61
c61
Souvenir de Californie
Alternative Title: The French Coast
1953/1955
Oil, casein, pasted papers, and charcoal
on board
16 x 12 in. (40.6 x 30.5 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper right: RM
Verso: “souvenir de californie”
1953–55 16" x 12"
Verso [circled ]: [#c2550]
Verso [partially painted over]: [“The
French Coast”] Robert Motherwell
Collage + Casein New York 28
Verso [painted over]: [Robert
Motherwell] [1953]
Verso: “Souvenir de Californie”
Robert Motherwell 1953–55
artist’s studio number
c53/55-5168
present owner
Collection of Isabel Trimper
52
collages
provenance
Private collection, ca. 1955; [Sotheby’s,
New York, May 2, 1988, lot 3376, illus.];
Isabel Trimper, 1988
solo exhibitions
Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, New York,
April 1953 (shown in early state), as
The French Coast.
group exhibitions
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,
Philadelphia, 1956, cat. no. 164.
Lyman Allyn Museum, New London,
Conn., 1965.
comments
The technique employed in this
collage—tearing away pasted papers
and leaving traces of the earlier forms
in pieces of torn paper and glue residue—is similar to that used in The End
of Dover Beach (c68), which underwent
similar revisions, and whose title change,
from Dover Beach to The End of Dover
Beach, evokes a similar kind of “memory” of an earlier version of the work.
The circled “#c2550” inscribed by
Motherwell on the verso is the Samuel
M. Kootz Gallery inventory number for
the work.
c62
Motherwell exhibited an early version of this collage as The French Coast
in his 1953 solo exhibition at the Kootz
Gallery. He reworked it in 1955,
inscribing it on the verso as Souvenir de
Californie and dating it “1953–55.” It
was photographed again before being
exhibited in its final state, as Souvenir
de Californie, at the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts in 1956.
The original title, The French Coast,
referred to the third line of Matthew
Arnold’s “Dover Beach”: “The sea is
calm to-night. / The tide is full, the
moon lies fair / Upon the straits; on
the French coast the light / Gleams and
is gone.”
The present title may refer to
Motherwell’s memories of California,
but it may also refer to the villa near
Cannes (on a French coast) that
Picasso purchased in 1954, which was
named “La Californie.”
c62
Untitled
1955
Pasted papers and graphite on
paperboard
20 x 15 in. (50.8 x 38.1 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper right: RM 55
artist’s studio number
c55-2602
present owner
Art Gallery of Ontario. Purchased
with funds from an anonymous donor,
with support from the Dedalus
Foundation, 1998
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991; Art Gallery
of Ontario, Toronto, 1998
references
Hume 1998, color illus. p. 1 (upside
down).
comments
The pasted papers in this work and in
Untitled (c63) include torn packaging
with labels from Abercrombie and
Fitch, and betting tickets for a horse
