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Lot Essay
One of George Ault's most important Surrealist landscapes, Universal Symphony evokes the artist's deep spiritual reaction to time spent alone in nature. Ault often walked at night near his home in Woodstock, New York, and this poetic winter nocturne emotionally captures his fascinating, haunting experience in the desolate wilderness after dark. The central figure, perhaps representing Ault himself, has more specific and unusual origins in the artist's close contemplation of Leonardo Da Vinci's The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (1510, Museé du Louvre, Paris, France). The artist's wife Louise explained, "...one morning while standing in the studio in front of a favorite reproduction hanging on the wall, Da Vinci's 'Virgin and Child with St. Anne,' he traced his forefinger lightly over the lower half, the arrangement of knees and legs with drapery--the movement. It was the movement of his form. 'I've been looking at it so long,' he explained. Behind the central form on his canvas were cloud shapes, a bland full moon, and blue horizon mountains. There was no water, yet what was that central form if not a spirit, in harmony with the universe, existing in a cool, quiet, mystically luminous subterranean world?" (Artist in Woodstock, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1978, p. 171)
Painted in 1947, Universal Symphony was notably the only work chosen by Louise to hang during Ault's memorial service following his death the next year. She explained, "George frequently quoted the proverb that 'Art should be seen with the eyes and not the mouth.' Therefore I will not discuss the picture and reason for choosing it beyond saying that to me its high spirituality makes it deeply appropriate. More than ever lately, as my husband's physical vitality was less, he seemed closer to the 'universe.' Although I am carrying on alone in our tiny studio dwelling...it is not the personal possessions that surround me but the moon last night, the sunrise this morning, and the sound of the wind today in the mountain pines that give me a close sense of him." (Louis Ault letter to Homer Saint-Gaudens, January 10, 1949, Archives of American Art, George Ault Papers)
Painted in 1947, Universal Symphony was notably the only work chosen by Louise to hang during Ault's memorial service following his death the next year. She explained, "George frequently quoted the proverb that 'Art should be seen with the eyes and not the mouth.' Therefore I will not discuss the picture and reason for choosing it beyond saying that to me its high spirituality makes it deeply appropriate. More than ever lately, as my husband's physical vitality was less, he seemed closer to the 'universe.' Although I am carrying on alone in our tiny studio dwelling...it is not the personal possessions that surround me but the moon last night, the sunrise this morning, and the sound of the wind today in the mountain pines that give me a close sense of him." (Louis Ault letter to Homer Saint-Gaudens, January 10, 1949, Archives of American Art, George Ault Papers)