Accession Number
1970/2.165

Title
Variations on Clark's Cove

Artist(s)
Grace Hartigan

Object Creation Date
1962

Medium & Support
watercolor and collage on paper

Dimensions
28 ½ in x 22 ½ in (72.39 cm x 57.15 cm);35 15/16 in x 31 in (91.28 cm x 78.74 cm)

Credit Line
Gift of W. Hawkins Ferry

Label copy
Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Hartigan received her first formal art training as a medical draftsman during World War II. In the years immediately following the war, she supported herself by designing small machine parts for Wright’s Aeronautical and Diamond Match Company. Her introduction to Abstract Expressionism came in her mid-twenties with a move to New York, where the works of the first generation of New York School painters were being exhibited in galleries across the city. With her background in an exacting and precise craft, Hartigan was intrigued by the free, experimental, and fluid works of Adolph Gottlieb, Willem de Kooning, and, particularly, Jackson Pollock. Immersing herself in the art world of New York in the 1950s, befriending poets as well as painters and taking painting classes, Hartigan developed a style that evolved from control and precision to a broader, more fluid hand.
Variations on Clark’s Cove is a collage of torn pieces of watercolor on paper—a technique the artist employed up until the 1980s, when her watercolors expanded to a larger format. The aqua, indigo, and rose palette and the choppy placement of the torn paper, which appears almost reflective, all evoke the body of water in New Bedford, Massachusetts, referenced in the title.
Katie Weiss, Research Assistant, on the occasion of the exhibition The New York School: Abstract Expressionism and Beyond and Beyond, July 20, 2002 – January 19, 2003

Primary Object Classification
Drawing

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
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Keywords
abstraction
modern and contemporary art