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Joseph Stella (1877–1946)

Lily and Bird

APG 21042D

c. 1919

Joseph Stella (1877–1946) Lily and Bird, about 1919
Joseph Stella (1877–1946). Lily and Bird, about 1919. Silverpoint and colored pencil on paper, 29 x 23 in.

Description

JOSEPH STELLA (1877–1946)
Lily and Bird, about 1919
Silverpoint and colored pencil on paper, 29 x 23 in.
Signed (at lower right): Joseph Stella

EXHIBITED: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, November 23, 1985–January 4, 1986, American Masterworks on Paper: Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints, pp. 6, 46 no. 47 illus. // (probably) Richard York Gallery, New York, October 5–November 17, 1990, Joseph Stella: 100 Works on Paper, no. 36

EX COLL: [Dudensing Galleries, New York]; sale, Christie’s, New York, December 7, 1984, lot 324; [Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1984]; to private collection, 2006 until the present

Around 1919, seeking to create a blissful environment filled with tranquility and innocence, Stella turned his attention to intimate drawings of flowers, birds, and butterflies conceived as spare, minimalist shapes isolated against an unadorned background in a manner not unlike that found in Asian art. (Flowers were particularly important to Stella, who once said: “My devout wish, that my every working day might begin and end––as a good omen––with the light, gay painting of a flower”.) Rendered in silverpoint and colored wax pencil with an amazing degree of precision, these personal excursions into representational realism exude a contemplative tone, their gentle lyricism acting as a foil to Stella’s frenetic, motion-filled cityscapes and mechanistic industrial scenes. (Along with artists such as Thomas Wilmer Dewing and Philip Leslie Hale, Stella was among the late-19th and early-20th century American painters to embrace the art of silverpoint, a demanding technique, first used by ancient scribes and artists and later Old Masters, which involved drawing with a fine-tipped silver rod on a surface often primed with a light coating of gesso. Drawn to the thin, pure line created by silverpoint, as well as by the medium’s inherent light-reflecting quality, Stella once described the meticulous process of cutting “with the sharpness of my silverpoint” as a “sensuous thrill.”

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