Art + Design

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

Provenance:

Karl Priebe, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Dr. and Mrs. Roger Parr, acquired from the above

Thence by descent to the present owner

Lot essay:

The present painting of an owl in an austere landscape with a crescent moon in the sky is typical of Gertrude Abercrombie’s work. The artist’s fascination with owls seems to have begun around 1945, the year she painted her first version of Toilet at Joy, Illinois, a subject she revisited a number of times. The subject was based on an experience she had when visiting her family in the western Illinois town of Aledo. She and a friend went to a bar in the neighboring town of Joy, and when she asked to use the facilities, they told her there was no bathroom, that folks just went out back. A kind waitress came to the table, led her out of the bar and down the street to an empty building which had a big room on the second floor with a toilet in one corner. Abercrombie noticed what she thought was a stuffed owl on a shelf at the other end of the room. Years later, returning to the bar, she asked about the stuffed owl, which she was interested in acquiring. After searching for the owner of the building, Abercrombie was told there was never a stuffed owl in the bathroom, although many owls flew in and out all the time. She loved the story, and it seems to have been the beginning of her interest in painting owls. But the owl was meaningful to her for other reasons.

Owls appear in numerous paintings by the artist and are always a reminder of both the wisdom and menace that the bird embodies. Abercrombie, who took on the persona of a witch, who often walked around her Hyde Park neighborhood in a peaked hat, often painted the witch’s familiars, cats and owls. This owl, like so many of those Abercrombie imagined, is anthropomorphic, and supports the idea that the animal is yet another of her alter egos. Rather than a feathery torso, the owl has a human-like pair of legs with simplified, but undeniable, female genitalia. If there was a doubt that the artist was present in this work, this detail checks it—the owl becomes a part human stand-in for a woman of mystery and menace. Like so many of her paintings, this one is a kind of self-portrait.

Abercrombie often made paintings designed for a specific friend or family member, sometimes incorporating a reference to them in the work itself. The present work was made for Emil Priebe, whose initials appear on a pennant held in the owl’s beak. According to Abercrombie’s own records, the painting was given to Emil as a gift the year it was painted. The initialed pennant was a favorite device used for this purpose and can be seen in many works done for friends and family. Owl for Emil subsequently went to his brother, the artist Karl Priebe, one of Abercrombie’s closest lifelong friends, perhaps after Emil died in 1965. The name Priebe inscribed on the back of the panel could refer to either of them. Dr. and Mrs. Roger Parr acquired the painting from Karl, and it passed by descent to the current owner.

Although simple and spare, the painting is balanced beautifully, with the owl’s green eyes reflecting the color of the ground, while the white feathers encircling those eyes echo the color of the pennant and the curve of the white moon. Abercrombie also conveys her own power, achieved through both wisdom and sorcery, in the persona of the owl with whom she is identified. It is another example of the artist’s attempt to control her world through her work, a personal form of magic.