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Lot Essay
Held in the same private collection for over thirty years, Joan Mitchell’s Petit Matin (1982) is a dazzling breakthrough work, brimming with the radiant oranges, lush greens and bursts of fuchsia that characterize the vibrant, colorful palette that she adopted in the early 1980s. This densely painted composition is a masterclass in Joan Mitchell’s unique language of color and gestural lyricality—distinct characteristics which would come to define the artist’s most ambitious and visually arresting paintings. Absorbed in the daily rhythms of life at La Tour, her sprawling French country estate, the bucolic splendor of Vétheuil is keenly felt in her palette.
“Petit Matin” refers to the early morning hours when the sun cracks over the horizon with first light. As an artist who routinely painted long into the wee hours of the night accompanied by Mozart’s melodies, Mitchell spent many “blue dawns” watching the sunrise at La Tour. In 1982, she devoted a small series to the subject, which she titled Petit Matin. This body of work in many ways anticipates the Grande Vallée suite that would emerge the following year. As the curator Katy Siegel has called them, these “exquisite small canvases” rank among “the most sheerly beautiful of her career” (K. Siegel, “La Vie en Rose,” in Joan Mitchell, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2020, p. 296).
Brimming with a bountiful exuberance, the present lot is a renaissance of color and dynamism, evocative perhaps of a flowering garden at the height of spring on a warm, sunny day. Throughout her career, Mitchell used color symbolically, and despite the challenges that plagued her personal life, she seemed determined to turn toward the joyous colors of the natural world. In 1981, Mitchell’s beloved friend and psychiatrist, Edrita Fried, passed away, and in 1982, her sister Sally died after a prolonged battle with cancer. And yet, as stated by the French critic Michel Waldberg “The magnificence of painting reaches its zenith...in the 1980s, [it’s] as if something, in her, had come to the surface” (M. Waldberg, Joan Mitchell, Paris, 1992, p. 55). Petit Matin synthesizes a lifetime of experience and intimate personal memories. It embodies all the fullness of life—its pain and pathos, sorrows and joy—in its glistening, kaleidoscopic display.
Using a loaded brush, Mitchell paints in thick, vigorous strokes, leaving visible areas of impasto as a record of her work. Beneath the orange is a violet underlayer – perhaps an allusion to the early morning dawn evoked by the painting’s title. Areas of emerald green paint have been added to the surface in flickering, light-filled strokes, which adds yet another reference to the natural world. In Mitchell’s hands, orange recalls the sunflowers that grew in her gardens in Vétheuil, and is reminiscent of her earlier Sunflower (1969), which was influenced by van Gogh, an artist Mitchell had admired since her days at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the case of the present lot, Mitchell’s almost otherworldly color sensibilities allow Petit Matin to emerge as a celebration of the natural world, with an impact that rivals only that which she achieves on larger canvases.
Indeed, Mitchell found solace in the daily rhythms of La Tour, a lush, two-acre property, that inspired Claude Monet while he was living there between 1878 and 1881. The gentle rhythm of the seasons found their release in paintings like Petit Matin, and similarly, in paintings named after the hours of the day and the weather that punctuated them: Rain (1989); No Rain (1976); Little Rain (1989); as well as Hours (1989); Afternoon (1969-70); and Noon (c. 1970). Throughout her career, Joan Mitchell never sought to slavishly mimic nature or render its exact likeness. Instead, she aimed to capture the emotional spirit of the landscapes that were evoked in her. “I carry my landscapes around inside me,” she once said. “I could certainly never mirror nature. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with” (J. Mitchell, quoted in J.E. Bernstock, Joan Mitchell, New York, 1988, p. 31). Indeed, her paintings of this era convey the impression of a remembered landscape, be it the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean, or the particular yellow of the sunflowers that she planted at Vétheuil, much like Twombly did in his beloved Gaeta botanical gardens. “A passionate inner vision guided Joan’s brush,” noted the curator Klaus Kertess. “Like her peer Cy Twombly, she extended the vocabulary of her Abstract Expressionist forebears. She imbued their painterliness with a compositional and chromatic bravery that defiantly alarms us into grasping their beauty” (K. Kertess, “Her Passion Was Abstract but No Less Combustible,” The New York Times, June 16, 2002).
In the early 1980s Mitchell was offered her very first museum exhibition in France, which would take place at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1982, the same year Petit Matin was painted. Spurred on by the invitation, being the first female American artist to exhibit at the institution, Mitchell tackled the project with a new sense of confidence, made manifest in the dramatically increased scale of the paintings exhibited. As the curator Katy Siegel observes, “The years 1979 to 1986 swelled with ambition—for art, not career—and the achievement in her work manifested a metaphysical depth.... Mitchell's paintings reached a new expanse, even as she grew more present in and anchored to the concrete details of her life” (K. Siegel, quoted in Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979-1985, exh. press release, Zwirner Gallery, New York, 2022, online). This display of her work cemented her status in France and Europe, which led to numerous acquisitions of her work by French private and public institutions in the following years.
Though unmistakably abstract, the radiant oranges, emerald greens, and soft mauves dancing across the canvas in Petit Matin summon a world teeming with life, intoxicating in its beauty and energy. Yet, the energy captured within Petit Matin is not confined to the inspiration drawn from the artist’s gardens. It pulses with an inner force— with ambitious, exuberant painterly marks that sweep across the canvas with a determination and physicality that stretches far beyond the painting's physical edge. A striking testament to Joan Mitchell's continued artistic prowess, Petit Matin embodies her mastery over her craft and the passion with which she wielded her brush. Anticipating the triumphant body of work known as the Grande Vallée paintings of the following year, Petit Matin is a commanding display of some of the most sought-after qualities to be found in Mitchell’s paintings, especially those created during the prolific latter half of her artistic career.
“Petit Matin” refers to the early morning hours when the sun cracks over the horizon with first light. As an artist who routinely painted long into the wee hours of the night accompanied by Mozart’s melodies, Mitchell spent many “blue dawns” watching the sunrise at La Tour. In 1982, she devoted a small series to the subject, which she titled Petit Matin. This body of work in many ways anticipates the Grande Vallée suite that would emerge the following year. As the curator Katy Siegel has called them, these “exquisite small canvases” rank among “the most sheerly beautiful of her career” (K. Siegel, “La Vie en Rose,” in Joan Mitchell, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2020, p. 296).
Brimming with a bountiful exuberance, the present lot is a renaissance of color and dynamism, evocative perhaps of a flowering garden at the height of spring on a warm, sunny day. Throughout her career, Mitchell used color symbolically, and despite the challenges that plagued her personal life, she seemed determined to turn toward the joyous colors of the natural world. In 1981, Mitchell’s beloved friend and psychiatrist, Edrita Fried, passed away, and in 1982, her sister Sally died after a prolonged battle with cancer. And yet, as stated by the French critic Michel Waldberg “The magnificence of painting reaches its zenith...in the 1980s, [it’s] as if something, in her, had come to the surface” (M. Waldberg, Joan Mitchell, Paris, 1992, p. 55). Petit Matin synthesizes a lifetime of experience and intimate personal memories. It embodies all the fullness of life—its pain and pathos, sorrows and joy—in its glistening, kaleidoscopic display.
Using a loaded brush, Mitchell paints in thick, vigorous strokes, leaving visible areas of impasto as a record of her work. Beneath the orange is a violet underlayer – perhaps an allusion to the early morning dawn evoked by the painting’s title. Areas of emerald green paint have been added to the surface in flickering, light-filled strokes, which adds yet another reference to the natural world. In Mitchell’s hands, orange recalls the sunflowers that grew in her gardens in Vétheuil, and is reminiscent of her earlier Sunflower (1969), which was influenced by van Gogh, an artist Mitchell had admired since her days at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the case of the present lot, Mitchell’s almost otherworldly color sensibilities allow Petit Matin to emerge as a celebration of the natural world, with an impact that rivals only that which she achieves on larger canvases.
Indeed, Mitchell found solace in the daily rhythms of La Tour, a lush, two-acre property, that inspired Claude Monet while he was living there between 1878 and 1881. The gentle rhythm of the seasons found their release in paintings like Petit Matin, and similarly, in paintings named after the hours of the day and the weather that punctuated them: Rain (1989); No Rain (1976); Little Rain (1989); as well as Hours (1989); Afternoon (1969-70); and Noon (c. 1970). Throughout her career, Joan Mitchell never sought to slavishly mimic nature or render its exact likeness. Instead, she aimed to capture the emotional spirit of the landscapes that were evoked in her. “I carry my landscapes around inside me,” she once said. “I could certainly never mirror nature. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with” (J. Mitchell, quoted in J.E. Bernstock, Joan Mitchell, New York, 1988, p. 31). Indeed, her paintings of this era convey the impression of a remembered landscape, be it the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean, or the particular yellow of the sunflowers that she planted at Vétheuil, much like Twombly did in his beloved Gaeta botanical gardens. “A passionate inner vision guided Joan’s brush,” noted the curator Klaus Kertess. “Like her peer Cy Twombly, she extended the vocabulary of her Abstract Expressionist forebears. She imbued their painterliness with a compositional and chromatic bravery that defiantly alarms us into grasping their beauty” (K. Kertess, “Her Passion Was Abstract but No Less Combustible,” The New York Times, June 16, 2002).
In the early 1980s Mitchell was offered her very first museum exhibition in France, which would take place at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1982, the same year Petit Matin was painted. Spurred on by the invitation, being the first female American artist to exhibit at the institution, Mitchell tackled the project with a new sense of confidence, made manifest in the dramatically increased scale of the paintings exhibited. As the curator Katy Siegel observes, “The years 1979 to 1986 swelled with ambition—for art, not career—and the achievement in her work manifested a metaphysical depth.... Mitchell's paintings reached a new expanse, even as she grew more present in and anchored to the concrete details of her life” (K. Siegel, quoted in Joan Mitchell: Paintings, 1979-1985, exh. press release, Zwirner Gallery, New York, 2022, online). This display of her work cemented her status in France and Europe, which led to numerous acquisitions of her work by French private and public institutions in the following years.
Though unmistakably abstract, the radiant oranges, emerald greens, and soft mauves dancing across the canvas in Petit Matin summon a world teeming with life, intoxicating in its beauty and energy. Yet, the energy captured within Petit Matin is not confined to the inspiration drawn from the artist’s gardens. It pulses with an inner force— with ambitious, exuberant painterly marks that sweep across the canvas with a determination and physicality that stretches far beyond the painting's physical edge. A striking testament to Joan Mitchell's continued artistic prowess, Petit Matin embodies her mastery over her craft and the passion with which she wielded her brush. Anticipating the triumphant body of work known as the Grande Vallée paintings of the following year, Petit Matin is a commanding display of some of the most sought-after qualities to be found in Mitchell’s paintings, especially those created during the prolific latter half of her artistic career.