Women’s Work

Provenance:

Nielsen Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts

The Estate of Nellie L. Taft, Boston, Massachusetts

Freeman's, sale of November 3, 2013, lot 192

Acquired directly from the above sale by the present owner

Exhibited:

Boston, Nielsen Gallery, Joan Snyder: The Nature of Things, April 27-June 1, 2002, exh. cat., cat. no. 1 (illus.)

Lot Essay:

Joan Snyder’s Field series began in the early 1980s and extends to her practice today. Little Ripened Fields comes from a particular moment, in the fall of 2001, right after September 11, when the artist said “the sun became a major theme - the desire for light and fruition and decay, but decay as a natural process.” Not political in intent, the works from this period incorporate organic materials like herbs, straw and the earth itself, grounding the viewer at a very destabilizing time for the United States. Like its nearly three-times larger counterpart Ripened Fields, Little Ripened Fields is a diptych, the left side covered with organic material and passages of thick paint, the right side a more spare study, both bright and sunny and full of hope. 

Joan Snyder’s work gained recognition at the height of the Feminist art movement in the 1960s and 1970s, beginning with her neo-abstract grid paintings and then moving to include representation of the female body, often incorporating text into her compositions. Her early “stroke paintings” turned the gestural mark into what she terms a kind of Expressionism, an examination of feeling, memory and personal exploration. Represented in the Whitney Biennial exhibitions as well as major museum collections around the world, Snyder was also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2007.