43

Agnes Pelton

1881-1961

"Flowering," 1929

Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower right: Agnes Pelton; signed again, titled, and inscribed: "Water Mill Long Island N.Y. $200" (twice each), all in pencil on the upper and side stretcher bars; also with the stenciled number 452 on the upper stretcher bar. Displayed in the artist's original, silver-grey painted, wood frame.

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24" H x 19" W

  • Provenance:
    The Artist
    Matille Prigge "Billie" Seaman (1883-1966), neighbor and friend of Agnes Pelton
    Josephine Morse True (1888-1975), neighbor and friend of Agnes Pelton, and author of the 1965 memoir, "Painted Rocks"
    Estate of Anne-Marie Boyce, San Diego, CA, acquired from the above, circa 1970s
  • Exhibited:
    New York, NY, Montross Gallery, "Abstractions by Agnes Pelton," November 11- 23, 1929, no. 12.

    Plainfield, NJ, Plainfield Public Library, "Exhibition of Paintings by Agnes Pelton," March 16-30, 1931.

    Ogunquit, ME, Ogunquit Art Center, "9th Annual Exhibition of Painting & Etchings," June 15-July 30, 1931. This exhibition included Pelton's "Flowering," according to Margaret Stainer, "Agnes Pelton" (Fremont: Ohlone College Art Gallery, 1989) page 33.

    Andover, MA, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, "Third Loan Exhibition," curated by Charles H. Sawyer, 1931 (specific months not known). This exhibition included Pelton's "Flowering," according to Margaret Stainer, "Agnes Pelton" (Fremont: Ohlone College Art Gallery, 1989) page 33.

    Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn Society of Modern Artists, Painters & Sculptors Gallery, "Annual Exhibit," March 1-13, 1932. This exhibition included Pelton's "Flowering," according to Margaret Stainer, "Agnes Pelton" (Fremont: Ohlone College Art Gallery, 1989) page 33.
  • Literature:
    Margaret Stainer, "Agnes Pelton," (Fremont: Ohlone College Art Gallery, 1989) published to coincide with their exhibition October 9 - November 5, 1989.

    Ed Garman, Posthumous inventory of Agnes Pelton's abstractions, "Raymond Jonson Papers, University of New Mexico" no. 28 (circa 1961-62).

    "The Art News," volume 28, issue 7 (November 16, 1929).

    "An Exhibit of Paintings: Miss Pelton Making Display of Her Work in New York," "Matawan Journal," (November 15, 1929): page 2.

    Agnes Pelton Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, "Notebook/Sketchbook IV" (circa 1917-1929): 95a-b, 97a-b.
  • Notes: This lot is sold together with a copy of Josephine Morse True, "Painted Rocks" (San Diego: Arts & Crafts Press, 1965). A friend, neighbor, and one of the former owners of this oil painting, True's now out-of-print memoir includes various Agnes Pelton-related anecdotes.

    John Moran Auctioneers is grateful for the assistance from Mr. Michael Kelley with the research and cataloging of this painting.

     "…the miracles of growth day and night, the fountains of young green corn and the morning dew on the wild blueberries were a deep inspiration." -Agnes Pelton

    Unseen in public for nearly one hundred years and rescued from a house clearance of items destined for bulk donation to Mexico, Agnes Pelton's transcendental abstraction Flowering represents a significant discovery by a pioneering American modernist whose works have been acquired for the permanent collections of over two dozen American museums including MoMA NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Crocker Art Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

    The salvation of this striking and otherworldly painting from likely destruction is one in a series of fortuitous events bordering on the miraculous that have characterized the renaissance of interest in Agnes Pelton's art which commenced in the early 1980s and continues to proliferate via museum exhibitions and acquisitions, catalogue publications, scholarly analysis, and public adulation. Underscoring the rarity of "Flowering's" discovery and offer for purchase is the fact that it is only the fifth Pelton transcendental abstraction to be offered at auction since the artist's passing in 1961.

    "Flowering" was conceived and painted by Agnes Pelton in August 1929 in her rural windmill home and studio on Long Island, shortly after returning from an eight-month visit to Southern California where she would move permanently in late 1931. "Life in the windmill seems, as Miss Pelton describes it, a tranquil experience. She paints all day, till dusk stops her brush. Then she has tea and lies by the window watching the stars come out. There is nothing in the way of the gorgeous view that is the windmill's own, and at night the wide heavens are hers." From "Windmill Home of Artist Inspires Unique Paintings" by Jane Corby, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, Friday, February 20, 1931.

    "Flowering" made its public debut in the exhibition Abstractions by Agnes Pelton, November 11th to 23rd, 1929, at the Montross Gallery, New York City, in the company of "The Fountains," "Star Gazer," "Being," "Incarnation," "Ecstasy," and "Meadowlark's Song – Winter," works which today are widely exhibited, reproduced, and the focus of ongoing scholarly analysis.

    The Montross exhibition was a life-changing event for Pelton. In addition to being an early solo showing of seminal abstract works, it is where she met music composer, philosopher, and fellow artist Dane Rudhyar (1895-1985) who became her close friend & mentor, astrologer, and chief art world advocate. Their decades-long friendship was of inestimable benefit to Pelton who revealed more of herself to Rudhyar, both personally and as an artist, than anyone else in her life. Through their relationship, Agnes was introduced to artist Raymond Jonson (1891-1982), with whom she exhibited in Santa Fe in 1933. This association led to Jonson, Pelton, and Rudhyar joining the New Mexico-based Transcendental Painting Group, for which Pelton also served as honorary president. The TPG's philosophical and artistic alliance, forged "to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world," was explored in the traveling survey Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group, curated by Michael Duncan, Crocker Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art & traveling, 2021-2023. Today, some of the most perceptive and meaningful insights into Agnes Pelton and her art are those written by Dane Rudhyar: "Her remarkable technique by means of which she produces an intense luminosity of color was acquired largely through her study of flowers" and is "the art of a woman of exquisite sensibility and awakened intuition who unveils through it an inner life rich in spiritual content." - Dane Rudhyar, from his 1938 essay The Transcendental Movement in Painting, published in the exhibition catalogue "Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group" (Crocker Art Museum, 2021).

    In addition to the Montross show, "Flowering" was also exhibited at the Plainfield Public Library, New Jersey, 1931; the Ogunquit Art Center, Maine, 1931; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Massachusetts, 1931; and the Brooklyn Painters & Sculptors Gallery, New York, 1932.

    Agnes Pelton held a deep Zen-like reverence for nature. An avid gardener with a love of flora, she understood from direct observation and hands-on experience the biodynamics of growth and wonders of bloom, which she perceived as symbolically reflective of universal truths found in humankind and the cosmos. In a 1926 newspaper interview, she seems to foretell her vision for "Flowering" while reminiscing that during the period from 1914 to 1918 "came the war and raising vegetables with no time for painting but the miracles of growth day and night, the fountains of young green corn and the morning dew on the wild blueberries were a deep inspiration."

    The solitude and beauty provided by Pelton's two homes of the period--the windmill on Long Island and the secluded farm in rural Connecticut--were essential to her spiritual well-being and art-making. She painted both representational and abstract compositions palpably influenced by these serene and picturesque environments, among which "Flowering" is a prime example.

    Pelton's extensive world travels included visits to Italy, Paris, the Middle East, the American Southwest, various locales on both the East and West Coasts, and Hawaii. These experiences were fundamental to her acquisition of the botanical knowledge, creative vision, and refined artistic sensibilities requisite for producing exotic and richly symbolic compositions like "Flowering." In considering this essential facet of Pelton's evolution toward abstraction, Gilbert Vicario, curator of the exhibition "Agnes Pelton, Desert Transcendentalist" (Phoenix Art Museum & traveling, 2019-2021) observes, "From 1921 to 1926, she traveled extensively to far-flung places including lengthy stays in Hawaii and Syria, which afforded her firsthand knowledge of the seemingly contradictory landscapes and flora of these two diverse locales."

    In late 1931, Agnes Pelton moved from her windmill home on Long Island and relocated to Cathedral City, California, near Palm Springs, where she lived and painted for the next thirty years until her passing in 1961. Despite the harsh climate and sparse population, Pelton was deeply inspired by the desert environment and thrived artistically. The area became an enclave for those of a creative bent and was home to the Sven-Ska resort, a favorite stop for visiting artists, many of whom Pelton entertained. Landscape painter Matille "Billie" Seaman (1883-1966) and beekeeper-author Josephine Morse True (1888-1975), both former owners of "Flowering," were residents of Cathedral City and neighbors of Pelton, as were husband-and-wife authors Irving Sussman (1908-1996) and Cornelia "Corinne" Sussman (1910-1999). The Sussmans held the honored distinction of being the caretakers of Pelton's extensive archive which they donated to the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, providing an invaluable research resource that continues to be a wellspring of information for scholars.

    Agnes Pelton regularly opened her home and studio to host salon-style teas and exhibitions of her work and that of local artists. Welcoming a broad range of visitors consisting of neighbors and area residents, fellow artists and luminaries, relatives, children, and travelers from near and far, Pelton's small residential gallery was the genesis for what eventually became the Desert Art Center which continues to operate in Palm Springs. The guestbook Pelton kept provides a fascinating window into her life and the small-town art world activities of Cathedral City during the 1940s and '50s and is now available to view online as part of the Smithsonian's Agnes Pelton papers.

    Pelton's Desire to Make 'Living Art'

    'She has treated the various items within the paintings in a way which seems to give them a life outside the purely physical." - Raymond Jonson, from his lecture "Three Paintings by Agnes Pelton," University of New Mexico, circa 1939.

    With its themes of upward surging growth and blossoming unfoldment, "Flowering" is an example of Agnes Pelton consciously designing a picture with qualities intended to infuse it with the energies of a living creation. This conceptually advanced dynamic was noted by an anonymous author who reported in 1934 that Pelton "...feels a new element has come into art with the moderns, namely the duration of time in a picture. This means that some part of the picture keeps on going like a fountain while you watch it. 'The sensibilities are developing along lines in this air-minded age we were not aware of before,' Miss Pelton explained."

    In "Spiritual Moderns:Twentieth-Century American Artists and Religion," (Chicago University Press, 2023), Erika Doss states that Pelton "…defined her Abstractions as animated entities-- expressing, becoming, leading, telling--engaged in an evolving 'state of being.' She saw them as living pictures: as vibrant images that embodied her spiritual thoughts and experiences, and possibly sparked similar awareness among viewers."

    A fundamental dynamic of Pelton's abstract compositions, as Margaret Stainer writes in her "Agnes Pelton: Drawings" catalogue essay (Ohlone College, 1996), was the desire to create spiritually transformative art. "Pelton was interested in the image as a window into another world, of color and forms that correspond poetically within the viewer. She is interested in life in nature… the soul in portraits… and in human correspondence to the physical and immanent energies surrounding us. She clothed her symbolic images, the abstractions, in the illusionistic language of atmospheric color and volumetric light that gave them depth and believable presence."

    In his essay, "Deep Streams Flow, Endlessly Renewing," Nathan Rees elaborates, "For Pelton, the appearance of creating and viewing art was central to its spiritual function. In her view, a work of art was not a physical repository of meaning so much as a nexus through which diverse interpretations brought by the artist and the viewer could converge. Pelton meant to do more than simply elicit a particular emotional response through her art—she considered the 'inner realm' from which she felt her paintings arose to be a fount of spiritual knowledge. The inner visions that she sought to portray were intended…to allow others, through the act of viewing, to access their own internal sight, awaken their own spiritual perception." (American Religious Liberalism, edited by Leigh E. Schmidt and Sally M. Promby, Indiana University Press, 2012).

    Flowering was designed to be a "living picture" that conveys a sense of movement and bioactivity. This is evidenced in Pelton's 1929 sketchbook entry in which she drew side-by-side downward and upward facing arrows with the note "double action, down & up – transformed."

    In addition, to philosophically-informed compositional content, Pelton's methods of infusing her abstractions with "living" energies included the application of numerology and metaphysical color theory, both of which are pillars of Theosophy in which colors and numbers are believed to have vibrational frequencies that correspond to scientific principles and spiritual energies governing matter, states of consciousness, and aspects of the human psyche.

    Pelton's notebooks reveal a recurring focus on numbers. Entries range from details of complex numerical systems and examples of magic squares to calculations for determining canvas dimensions to align artworks with specific numerological attributes. In an entry from March 1929, written during her eight-month stay in South Pasadena to study with Will Levington Comfort's Theosophy-based "Glass Hive" group, a deeper agenda beyond appearances is expressed in Pelton's observation that "All vibratory activity expresses itself in form, color, and sound, the energy always of that particular color or shade belonging to that particular rate of vibration." This quote is a closely paraphrased transcription of a passage from the 1927 publication "A Book About You" by Charles F. Haanel (1866-1949). Pelton's awareness of and adherence to such principles suggests that the colors used for Flowering were selectively chosen for their metaphysical properties.

    "Agnes Pelton began her career as a painter of landscapes, portraits, and above all flowers. The latter seems to have offered her a natural transition to the realm of imaginative forms and exquisitely shaded colors. Flowers are, as it were, the climax of the plant's effort toward the sun. And works of art like those of Miss Pelton are very much like the flowering of an individual life. In practically all her works we witness a victory of light over darkness, and of life over death. They are psalms of integration sung to the spirit of man." -Dane Rudhyar, introduction to Agnes

    Agnes Pelton felt a deep connection with flowers and saw them as symbols of spiritual qualities that correlate with human life and personal transformation. With its intertwining forms, blooming energy, and bio-luminescence, "Flowering" offers a portal for earthly, cosmic, and personal exploration. It exemplifies Pelton's uniquely beautiful and pioneering contributions to the history of American Modernism.

    A note regarding the rarity of "Flowering's" frame:
    Agnes Pelton was particular and exact about the frames used for her abstractions, which she handmade and painted silver. Unfortunately, most of these frames have been discarded and few have survived. "Flowering" retains its original frame preserving Agnes Pelton's complete vision of design and construction.
  • Condition: Visual: Overall good condition. Occasional scattered and unobtrusive craquelure. Soft stretcher bar creases along all four sides as well as frame abrasions in places at the extreme outer edges.

    Blacklight: Two narrow, nearly horizontal lines of touch-up, one approximately 5.5" long, to the left of center near the upper edge, attendant with the stretcher bar creasing described, and one roughly 4" long near the upper left corner. Scattered small touch-ups, generally pea-sized or smaller, showing primarily in the upper left quadrant, plus one at the base of the bulb in the lower portion of the canvas. Several of these touch-ups relate to small and unobtrusive, skillful repairs. Touch-ups attendant with the scattered frame abrasions are concentrated primarily along the upper edge.

    A conservation report can be provided upon request.

    Frame: 26" H x 20.75" W x 2" D


    Condition reports are offered as a courtesy and are typically published in Moran's catalogue or can be made available upon request. The absence of a condition report does not imply that an item is free from defects or restoration, nor does a reference to particular defects imply the absence of others. Buyers are responsible for determining to their own satisfaction the true nature and condition of any lot prior to bidding. Though buyers are not legally required to inspect lots prior to purchase, failure to do so may constitute a waiver of complaint that an item was not delivered in a condition equal to the existent condition at the auction.

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August 13, 2024 10:00 AM PDT
Monrovia, CA, US

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