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Lot Essay
Fairfield Porter is renowned for his bold paintings of quiet domestic life, enhanced by his progressive interpretations of light and color while rendering daily life in his family homestead on Penobscot Bay, Maine. The Porch Door is a seminal example from the artist’s work of the 1960s, capturing his admiration for the interior narratives of French masters, such as Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, yet rendered in a style and language distinctly his own. In his lifelong pursuit of realistic, non-abstract subjects, however, Porter was far ahead of his time, particularly in painting portraits of his family and friends and their everyday environments.
The Porch Door, painted in 1962, incorporates more abstract forms, a brighter color scheme and freer, more immediate impressions of his subjects. With a confident use of color and light, Porter eschewed traditional techniques of contour and form, and the inherent lack of spontaneity that follows. Instead, in works such as The Porch Door, he strove for a freshness and vitality similar to the abstract painters of his generation, but grounded in a less theoretical, more realistic approach. William C. Agee notes, "[Porter's] paintings convey a strong sense of place and presence, but for him the literal transcription of what he saw before him was beside the point. The actual subject was of little concern; rather it was in the paint itself that he found the life, the vitality, and the wholeness of the painting. He understood that the difference between realism and abstraction is not as simple as it seems...Rather than literally describing, Porter determined the relations and connections between things, and for him it was these relations that were the vital elements in a painting." (Fairfield Porter: An American Painter, Southampton, New York, 1993, p. 11) Porter uses a bold sense of both vertical and horizontal line to establish space and tension in the scene, juxtaposing interior and exterior, sun and shade and finally realism and abstraction. The interior setting is devoid of human presence, but the chairs haphazardly strewn through the two rooms hint that conversation has just ceased and the inhabitants have only recently moved on, providing the painting with a haunting melancholy and stillness. Yet, Porter’s distinct handling of the paint and attention to form, light and color activate the scene with a richly composed surface.
Often considered the artist’s best works, Porter's paintings from the last fifteen years of his life are looser in style and incorporate more abstract forms and colors, allowing him to record freer and more immediate impressions of his subjects. Kenworth Moffett writes that "[Porter's] mature paintings ask to be considered in the context of American Art. Most obviously, they relate to that realist tendency we find in Homer and Hopper...It is not that Porter was influenced by Homer or Hopper, but that all three were American realists who found the same thing. With Porter, this light was explored for its own sake and for what it did to color...He saw his surroundings through the medium of paint and so became a 'painter's painter,' admired for the boldness and sensitivity visible in the aesthetic choices, especially the handling, color, tone juxtapositions, and 'weights.' This is very much what Porter's pictures are about. For all of their tact and understatement, Porter's mature paintings can be very bold when it comes to painterly values. His pictures seem ordinary, 'but the extraordinary is everywhere.'" (Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction, Boston, Massachusetts, 1982, p. 38)
A kinship to Richard Diebenkorn’s work from the same period similarly establishes a formal play of shape and form and an affinity towards the interplay of representation and abstraction. Rejecting the stricter concepts of their Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, both Porter and Diebenkorn succeeded in creating their own language of landscape painting in the 1960s. The success and strength of The Porch Door is perhaps best elucidated in the artist's own words: "When I paint I try not to see the object as what it is; I try to see only very concrete shapes which have no association except as themselves. I try not to know what is there, but only to see where one thing (color, tone, value) ends and another begins, and also to see its, perhaps it would be accurate enough to say, texture. I don't mind anyone else seeing things and animals etc., if it doesn't annoy them. I suppose you see these shapes, because I, in my effort to see very specific shapes, though of what I don't care, do make these shapes insofar as I make them concrete, like recognizable other objects..." (F. Porter to Allen C. Dubois, April 8, 1863, as quoted in W.C. Agee, et al., Fairfield Porter: An American Painter, exhibition catalogue, Southampton, New York, 1993, p. 77)
The Porch Door, painted in 1962, incorporates more abstract forms, a brighter color scheme and freer, more immediate impressions of his subjects. With a confident use of color and light, Porter eschewed traditional techniques of contour and form, and the inherent lack of spontaneity that follows. Instead, in works such as The Porch Door, he strove for a freshness and vitality similar to the abstract painters of his generation, but grounded in a less theoretical, more realistic approach. William C. Agee notes, "[Porter's] paintings convey a strong sense of place and presence, but for him the literal transcription of what he saw before him was beside the point. The actual subject was of little concern; rather it was in the paint itself that he found the life, the vitality, and the wholeness of the painting. He understood that the difference between realism and abstraction is not as simple as it seems...Rather than literally describing, Porter determined the relations and connections between things, and for him it was these relations that were the vital elements in a painting." (Fairfield Porter: An American Painter, Southampton, New York, 1993, p. 11) Porter uses a bold sense of both vertical and horizontal line to establish space and tension in the scene, juxtaposing interior and exterior, sun and shade and finally realism and abstraction. The interior setting is devoid of human presence, but the chairs haphazardly strewn through the two rooms hint that conversation has just ceased and the inhabitants have only recently moved on, providing the painting with a haunting melancholy and stillness. Yet, Porter’s distinct handling of the paint and attention to form, light and color activate the scene with a richly composed surface.
Often considered the artist’s best works, Porter's paintings from the last fifteen years of his life are looser in style and incorporate more abstract forms and colors, allowing him to record freer and more immediate impressions of his subjects. Kenworth Moffett writes that "[Porter's] mature paintings ask to be considered in the context of American Art. Most obviously, they relate to that realist tendency we find in Homer and Hopper...It is not that Porter was influenced by Homer or Hopper, but that all three were American realists who found the same thing. With Porter, this light was explored for its own sake and for what it did to color...He saw his surroundings through the medium of paint and so became a 'painter's painter,' admired for the boldness and sensitivity visible in the aesthetic choices, especially the handling, color, tone juxtapositions, and 'weights.' This is very much what Porter's pictures are about. For all of their tact and understatement, Porter's mature paintings can be very bold when it comes to painterly values. His pictures seem ordinary, 'but the extraordinary is everywhere.'" (Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction, Boston, Massachusetts, 1982, p. 38)
A kinship to Richard Diebenkorn’s work from the same period similarly establishes a formal play of shape and form and an affinity towards the interplay of representation and abstraction. Rejecting the stricter concepts of their Abstract Expressionist contemporaries, both Porter and Diebenkorn succeeded in creating their own language of landscape painting in the 1960s. The success and strength of The Porch Door is perhaps best elucidated in the artist's own words: "When I paint I try not to see the object as what it is; I try to see only very concrete shapes which have no association except as themselves. I try not to know what is there, but only to see where one thing (color, tone, value) ends and another begins, and also to see its, perhaps it would be accurate enough to say, texture. I don't mind anyone else seeing things and animals etc., if it doesn't annoy them. I suppose you see these shapes, because I, in my effort to see very specific shapes, though of what I don't care, do make these shapes insofar as I make them concrete, like recognizable other objects..." (F. Porter to Allen C. Dubois, April 8, 1863, as quoted in W.C. Agee, et al., Fairfield Porter: An American Painter, exhibition catalogue, Southampton, New York, 1993, p. 77)