FROM THE ESTATE OF DR. EDMUND P. PILLSBURY. WILLARD FRANKLIN MIDGETTE (American, 1937-1978). Senta, 1973. Oil on canva...

Description

FROM THE ESTATE OF DR. EDMUND P. PILLSBURY

WILLARD FRANKLIN MIDGETTE (American, 1937-1978)
Senta, 1973
Oil on canvas
54 inches (137.2 cm), equilateral triangle

PROVENANCE:
Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York, January 1974

NOTE:
Baltimore-born artist Willard Midgette was associated with the second generation of contemporary American realist painters, and taught at Reed College from 1963 to 1971. His mature style, which finds full expression in this work Ted Pillsbury acquired, was characterized by life-size figures, mostly clothed, in a space that could be seen as a continuation of the viewers' space. He was a great admirer of Annibale Carracci and other trompe l'oeil 15th- to 17th-century Italian painters. He spoke of creating an American Academy of Art in emulation of the Carracci academy of Bologna, and made an engraving of a painting by fellow figurative realist, Philip Pearlstein, as an homage. Midgette died of a brain tumor at the age of 40 in Brooklyn.

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