Lot Essay
The combination of extremely crisp formal qualities and an ambiguous mood are central to the enitre body of George Tooker's work. Three Women, executed in 1959-60, employs this composition to render the artist's ideas about the "'superior order' which might be possible in this world."(T.H. Garver, George Tooker, San Francisco, California, 1992, p. 88). The artist used the delicate and sensitive nature of tempera to render his emotions and thoughts in a formal setting. In this work, the painstakingly rendered women observe an unknown event or object. The artist has given his viewer a great deal of information about the physical attributes of the women and their surroundings, yet their situation remains unclear. "In Tooker's paintings, many of the images are mysterious, complex, and, in the final analysis, ambiguous. But if there is one touchstone to the paintings of George Tooker, it is the utterly simplicity of his themes. His paintings often rely on literary references or imagery from the past, but these come into effect only after the idea of the work has been formed. They are made in homage to the medium in which he works, to the richness and density of the history of art. But little is to be gained by the search for these historic references in Tooker's painting. George Tooker's particular genius lies not in the selection of his sources, which are many and varied, but in the way he used them to develop and express his ideas." (George Tooker, p. 10)