Modern & Contemporary Art

We are grateful for the research conducted by Susan Weininger, Professor Emerita, Roosevelt University.

Provenance:

The Artist

Rhoda Rosenthal, acquired from the Artist, 1957

Acquired from the above, c. 2015 - 2016

Exhibited:

Chicago, Oak Street Art Fair, 1957

Lot Essay:

Gertrude Abercrombie made use of a repertoire of objects that were personal to her throughout her career, but this painting stands out as unique. While the austere landscape with a grey sky and single cloud is typical, the blue bird looking into the lens of the binoculars is distinctive. The square of paper on the ground with the initials KP on it, however, gives a clue to the painting’s significance. The initials KP undoubtedly refers to Abercrombie’s dear friend Karl Priebe, an artist whom she met in Chicago in the early 1930s when he was attending the School of the Art Institute. He introduced her to jazz and the jazz musicians who became an enormous part of her life. After art and jazz, Priebe’s great love was nature, particularly birds. When he moved to Milwaukee in 1938, he and Abercrombie corresponded on an almost daily basis, and his postcards to her were often adorned with pictures of the birds he cherished. Priebe also did many portraits of friends with birds accompanying them, including one of Abercrombie, a bird perched on top of her head.

Priebe was a source of support and strength for Abercrombie when she was feeling low, as she was wont to do. While there is no evidence of a specific reason for her to honor Karl at this moment, she expressed her gratitude for his friendship regularly in the letters she sent to him, and this painting seems to be a reference to his interest in and affection for birds, almost a visual thank you note. In June 1957, the same year Blue Bird and Spy Glasses (Binoculars) was painted, she wrote to Priebe saying, “Still think of the marvelous weekend with you.  It really helped. It may have saved.” This is one of numerous expressions of appreciation for Karl’s friendship and support over the years.

Priebe painted many identifiable birds in a variety of media, including watercolor, casein, and gouache. In 1946, his painting The Ornithologist (Private Collection), points to this important aspect of his personality. While Abercrombie worked primarily in oil, her blue bird is just that—a blue bird without subtle distinctions of color that might distinguish it as a certain species. Her bird has the same kind of sweet awkwardness that characterizes her owls and even her beloved cats. The composition is characteristic of the artist, limited to a few simple elements arranged to construct a balance in both space and on the surface: the bird and binoculars form a diagonal that is offset by the diagonal placement of the white paper in the right foreground and the small white cloud in the upper left. The seeming simplicity is belied by the careful grouping of the objects to create a dynamism within a securely stable structure. Blue Bird and Spy Glasses (Binoculars) also has Abercrombie’s characteristic surreal whimsy and eccentricity that yield an endless fascination to bring the viewer back again and again, to see more each time.