Lot Essay
Painted circa 1920
Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald Wright were best known for their development of the American Sychromist school and Russell's early abstract works have been the most celebrated over the years. Russell, however, spent a great deal of the later years of his career painting figural works such as The Judgement of Paris. Russell often noted that the landscapes and still lifes that he painted in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s were executed largely because the public was more interested in acquiring these works than figural works, many of which were large in scale. However, these figural works, mostly of mythological themes, were considered by the artist to be more satisfying than the important works. Marilyn Kushner noted these sentiments in her exhibition catalogue for the 1990 retrospective of Russell's work at the Montclair Art Museum: "The figural painting in the Galerie La Licorne exhibition, and generally most of those from the 1920s-with the exception of the portraits (most of which were probably commissioned)-represented Russell's serious work, the work he cared about." (Marilyn Kushner, p. 140)
Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald Wright were best known for their development of the American Sychromist school and Russell's early abstract works have been the most celebrated over the years. Russell, however, spent a great deal of the later years of his career painting figural works such as The Judgement of Paris. Russell often noted that the landscapes and still lifes that he painted in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s were executed largely because the public was more interested in acquiring these works than figural works, many of which were large in scale. However, these figural works, mostly of mythological themes, were considered by the artist to be more satisfying than the important works. Marilyn Kushner noted these sentiments in her exhibition catalogue for the 1990 retrospective of Russell's work at the Montclair Art Museum: "The figural painting in the Galerie La Licorne exhibition, and generally most of those from the 1920s-with the exception of the portraits (most of which were probably commissioned)-represented Russell's serious work, the work he cared about." (Marilyn Kushner, p. 140)