While intimately scaled, Joan Mitchell’s Untitled, circa 1975, presents the artist’s monumental mastery of color and gesture. At first viewed as spontaneous and randomly placed, each gestural brushstroke is deliberate, providing a careful examination into the painting process which would come to define Mitchell’s late career. Energetic in its composition, Untitled was painted the year following the artist’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The painting was gifted originally to Dr. André Légaré in Montreal—a friend of Mitchell and her long-time partner Jean-Paul Riopelle, whom she separated from in 1979. During this period Mitchell gifted many small paintings to fellow friends and artists, often referred to by her as “suitcase” paintings, as they were small enough to carry.
“I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me - and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed. I could certainly never mirror nature. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with.”
—Joan MitchellMoving to Vétheuil, France in 1967, Mitchell would live and work in the French countryside until her death in 1992. Living near Giverny, the village which inspired many of Claude Monet’s greatest compositions, Mitchell became fascinated with her surroundings, using the natural landscape to inform her abstract practice. Never trying to render a landscape exactly as it appears, the artist instead sought to capture the essence of her settings, creating “remembered landscapes” which would flood her oeuvre from this period. Untitled is one such painting, hinting at the landscape through the jewel-toned shades of green, blue, and black splashed across the canvas. Richer, more heavily impastoed strokes occupy the lower margin of the composition, seeming to refer to the ground. Moving upwards, the pigment becomes less densely applied, alluding to the air or sky as in a traditional landscape.
Claude Monet, Banks of the Seine, Vétheuil, 1880, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.177 The expansiveness of the French countryside around her saw Mitchell’s works play out across multiple surfaces, including diptychs, like the present work, triptychs, and polyptychs. This experimentation into the multiplicity of canvases gave way to a dialogue between movement and pigment which would persist throughout the remainder of her practice. Here, the brushstrokes spread evenly across both canvases, not stopping at the junction between the two and moving fluidly between each. As if extending past the edges of the painting, it seems as if the brushstrokes have no end. They seem to go on infinitely, well beyond the intimately sized composition, suggesting that the landscape continues on with no bounds. Indeed, Untitled suggests that its owner can carry Mitchell’s infinite, remembered landscapes with them for eternity, as the artist had intended.
“I carry my landscapes with me.”
—Joan MitchellProvenance
The Artist
Dr. André Legaré, Montreal (gifted by the artist)
René Detroye Fine Art, Montreal
Miriam Shiell Fine Art, Toronto (acquired circa 1999)
William McWillie Chambers III, Catskill, New York (acquired from the above in 2000)
Acquired from the above by the present owner
138
Untitled
oil on canvas, diptych
left 13 1/8 x 9 1/2 in. (33.3 x 24.1 cm)
right 13 1/8 x 8 3/4 in. (33.3 x 22.2 cm)
overall 13 1/8 x 18 3/8 in. (33.3 x 46.7 cm)
Painted circa 1975.
Estimate
$350,000 - 550,000
Sold for $584,200
Annie Dolan
NY Head of Auctions and Specialist, Head of Sale, Morning Session
212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com
Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session
New York Auction 15 May 2024
117
This lot is no longer available.
142
This lot is no longer available.
158
This lot is no longer available.
175
This lot is no longer available.
