James Schuyler, 1960

Provenance

The artist
Richard Gray Gallery, New York
Dr. Joel Bernstein, Chicago
Margaret Lipworth Fine Arts, London
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York
Private Collection, 1988
Acquired by the present owner from above

Exhibited

The Arts Club of Chicago, Fairfield Porter: Paintings and Works on Paper, 12 November – 31 December 1984, no. 8.

Literature

T. Spike, Fairfield Porter, An American Classic (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), 290.

J. Ludman, et al., Fairfield Porter: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels (Hudson Mills Press, 2001) 168, no. L292, 390.

The Arts Club of Chicago, Fairfield Porter: paintings and works on paper: the Arts Club of Chicago, November 12 through December 31, 1984 (The Arts Club, 1984).

Related Works

Jimmy with Lamp, 1971, oil on canvas, 26½ x 35 inches, signed upper left: Fairfield Porter; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine

Jimmy and Liz, ca. 1963, oil on canvas, 45 x 40 ⅛ inches, signed lower left: Fairfield Porter; Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Untitled (Man Seated near Lamp), ca. 1953, oil on canvas, 24 x 32 inches; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York

Note

A painter, art critic, and teacher, Fairfield Porter was connected with numerous well-known artists, including Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, and Alex Katz, while also maintaining close relationships with poets such as Frank O’Hara and James Schuyler.[1] Schuyler, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a frequent subject of Porter’s work, appearing in many portraits. Porter’s 1950s–60s portraits, including faceless works like Untitled (Man Seated near Lamp), blend gray, ochre, peach, and orange tones to convey warmth and emotion, bridging realist and abstracted elements. Artist and critic Rackstraw Downes described Porter’s color palette as one in which “very intense color areas are aired out by a full range of subtle neutrals, and no matter how fierce in chroma such areas become, they contribute to the light and remain colors of nature.”[2]

Porter and Schuyler had a close personal and artistic relationship for over two decades, from the early 1950s until Porter’s death in 1975. Schuyler frequently visited and sometimes lived with the Porter family, keeping up a steady correspondence when he was not there, as he struggled with recurring mental illness and depression.[3]

Fairfield Porter had a great number of solo exhibitions at major institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, and Parrish Art Museum. His paintings are part of the most important American museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and many more.

[1] John T. Spike, Fairfield Porter: An American Classic (Harry Abrams, 1992), 174.

[2] Rackstraw Downes, “Unrepeatable Days,” ARTnews 82 (April 1982): 96-97.

[3] Justin Spring, Fairfield Porter: a Life in Art (Yale University Press: 2000),