Janet Lawrence Adams, Chicago (acquired directly from the artist) Robert McCormick Adams, Jr., California Thence by descent to the present owner
Catalogue Essay
Since its creation circa 1949, Joan Mitchell’s Untitled has been in the private collection of the Adams family of Chicago who owned several works by the artist. Attorney Robert McCormick Adams and his wife Janet Lawrence Adams acquired the painting directly from the young Joan Mitchell, a childhood friend of their children and the daughter of their family friends - dermatologist James Herbert Mitchell and poet Marion Strobel Mitchell. The Adams and the Mitchells ran in the same elite professional circle; their children grew up together and attended the Francis W. Parker School, a progressive high school in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The Adams children, Janys, Robert, Kyle and Mervyn, socialized with Joan and her sister Sally. The families’ paths crossed throughout their lives, including at the opening events at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, where Mitchell reconnected with her old schoolmate Robert McCormick Adams Jr., a noted anthropologist and then-Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Property from the Estate of Robert McCormick Adams, Jr.