Boy

Artist Jennifer Bartlett (American, 1941 - 2022)

Date1983

MediumOil on canvas triptych

DimensionsOverall: 84 × 180 × 1 1/4 inches (213.36 × 457.2 × 3.18 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Friends of Art

Object numberF83-67 A-C

Signedunsigned

On View

Not on view

Collections

Contemporary Art

Terms

DescriptionThree views of a white statue of a putto covering genitals with left hand at edge of pool in garden. A (left): top half is black sky; blue tile along bottom of image, white ledge above tile, tall blue grass above ledge going up to meet black sky; putto on right side standing on ledge, very white with blue ball in armpit. B (center): top third is green/black forest with a line of white rocks below it; below ricks is pink gravel; across the bottom of the image, moving at a diagonal upward to the left, is blue tile with white ledge above it; above ledge blue plants move up image to meet pink gravel; putto stands in center of ledge, mostly white but with accents of pink, blue, and yellow. C (right): green grass along bottom quarter of image, then putto (seen from above and behind) stands at edge of ledge; black pool extends out in front of putto to top of canvas; putto yellow/green.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Jennifer Bartlett, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, April 28-June 21, 1985, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, September 21-October 27, 1985, The Brooklyn Museum, November 18, 1985-January 5, 1986, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, February 8-March 22, 1986, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, April 19-June 15, 1986, unnumbered.

Reconnecting: Recent Work by Jennifer Bartlett, Mel Bochner, Nancy Graves, Patrick Ireland and Lucio Pozzi, The Detroit Institute of Arts, June 10-September 13, 1987, hors cat.

A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions 1977–1987, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, October 14–December 6 1987, 83.

Seven American Painters – The Balance of Abstraction and Realism, Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Haus der Kunst, Munich, March 14-May 5, 1991.

Gallery Label

Jennifer Bartlett’s Boy is part of a series of paintings and drawings titled In the Garden. The series was inspired by a six-month vacation in Nice, France. Faced with endless rain, Bartlett found herself confined to a cold, uncomfortable villa and began drawing the views of the surrounding grounds. The freely applied brushstrokes capture the effects of bright, artificial light on a pool and putto (traditional figure of a boy), seen from her window in the darkness of night. By the end of this series, she finished nearly 200 drawings and eight paintings.

Provenance

With Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, by 1985;

Purchased from Paula Cooper Gallery by the Friends of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1985;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1985.

Published References

“Museum Gifts”, Kansas City Star (April 8, 1984), 6E (repro.).

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, “New at the Nelson”, Museum Calendar of Events (Kansas City: April 1984), cover (repro.).

Alice Thorson, “Bartlett Exhibition has Academic Feel”, Kansas City Star (August, 28, 1984), G3.

Phyllis Freeman, New Art (New York: Abrams, 1984), 23 (repro.).

Nancy Roth, Visual Art (April 1985), 50.

Marge Goldwater et al., Jennifer Bartlett, exh. cat. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985), 6 (repro.).

Richard Marshall, 50 New York Artists: A Critical Selection of Painters and Sculptors Working New York (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1986), 20, 21 (repro.).

Roger Ward, A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions 1977–1987, exh. cat. (Kansas City: The University Trustees of The William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 1987), 190, 191 (repro.).

Jan Greenberg, Sandra Johnson, The Painter’s Eye: Learning to Look at Contemporary American Art (New York : Delacorte Press, 1991), 60, 61 (repro.), 90.

Sieben Amerikanische Maler, exh. cat. (Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich, 1991), 31 (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 229, (repro.).

Jennifer Bartlett: In the Garden (1980-83), exh. cat. (Philadelphia, PA : Locks Gallery, 2014), cover (repro.), 36, 37 (repro.).

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