Post-War & Contemporary Art

Provenance:

The Artist

Margot Beman Andreas, purchased from the Artist, 1954

Thence by descent

Sold: Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, December 11, 2014, Lot 40 (as Dominoes and Robin Eggs)

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Exhibited:

Chicago, Marshall Field and Company, December 1954, no. 32

Chicago, State of Illinois Art Gallery, Gertrude Abercrombie, March 18 - May 17, 1991; Springfield, Illinois State Museum, July 28 - October 15, 1991, p. 93

Lot Essay:

Shell Game Sleight of Hand

Eggs and Dominoes, which consists of three eggs and four dominoes arranged artfully on a pink surface against a gray background, was first shown at Abercrombie’s solo show at Marshall Field and Company Gallery in December 1954 (no. 32). It was sold to her friend Margot Beman Andreas, with Abercrombie recording the sale price as $50. The painting descended through Andreas' family until it was sold at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers (now Hindman), Chicago, in 2014.  This artwork was also shown in the exhibition Gertrude Abercrombie at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield and Chicago in 1991.

The painting was done during one of Abercrombie’s most productive periods, when she showed at many exhibitions and open-air art fairs at which she was a fixture, particularly the Hyde Park Art Fair near her home. Her increased productivity may also be connected to a need to generate income after her first marriage to Bob Livingston, a successful lawyer, ended and she married Frank Sandiford, a less reliable provider. At this time, she began to do many still life images like Eggs and Dominoes, replete with elements such as shells, jacks, dice, ribbon, leaves, and balls, as well as eggs and dominoes. Like the objects she used throughout her career, these items are not random, but have some personal meaning, and are always varied, beautifully arranged, and meaningful.  

Abercrombie was fond of games and frequently depicted in her work playing cards, balls and jacks, dice, and dominoes. Eggs also had a personal resonance, and her numerous images of eggshells and chicks emerging from eggs give us a clue to their appeal. They are a kind of enclosure, a home of sorts. Beginning with the empty, closed rooms that appear early in her career, the tents she painted in the 1940s and 1950s, and the shells that began to appear in the 1950s, Abercrombie had an abiding interest in spaces that served as a metaphor for her own feelings of isolation and insecurity. While the egg isn’t an exact parallel, she found in it a subject that not only echoed the idea of enclosure but also offered a way to employ her sense of humor in themes such as Eggs-It (1955, location unknown), Chick in an Egg Cup (1954, Private Collection), and Which Came First? (1955, Private Collection). The number of dots on the dominoes add up to eight, which may allude to the witticism in Leaf, Ribbon, Domino, Dice, Shell, Pieces of Eight (1954, location unknown), where the number of dots on the dice as well as the dominoes add up to eight but there are no actual pieces of eight to be seen.  

Eggs and Dominoes is also an example of the kind of paintings executed by Abercrombie during this period, when she was encouraged by her good friend, the artist John Wilde, to paint more carefully and precisely. The beautifully rendered eggs and dominoes show her prowess in the creation of three-dimensional objects and attest to the skills she worked hard to acquire in her traditional art classes at the University of Illinois. The composition is likewise characteristically free of anything extraneous. Through the careful arrangement of surface and space to create a balanced but dynamic whole, as well as the use of limited, subtle color in the eggs that contrast against the black of the dominoes and the grey of the background, the artist has created a sparkling composition using minimal means. With its austere and restrained composition combined with ordinary objects, this visually appealing artwork invites us into Abercrombie’s own interior life, an echo of her own psyche.

Susan Weininger

Professor Emerita

Roosevelt University