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

Provenance:

Gifted by the Artist to Dr. John T. Reynolds, Kalamazoo, Michigan in exchange for medical services in 1952,

Acquired from the estate of the above by the present owner.

Exhibited:

New York, Edwin Hewitt Gallery, 1952.

Chicago, Newman Brown Gallery, 1952.

Chicago, Stevens-Gross Gallery, 1952.

Milwaukee, Bresler Gallery, 1952.

Evanston, Illinois, Contemporary Arts Gallery, 1953.

Chicago, Design Center, 1953.

Lot Note:

This is an exquisite work by Gertrude Abercrombie, depicting a group of shells from the collection of Robert Merriam. Merriam served as the Chicago Alderman of the 5th ward from 1947-55, which included the Hyde Park neighborhood where Abercrombie lived for most of her life. Although Merriam was not in the artist’s inner circle, they certainly knew each other. By the time this painting was made, she was a well-known resident of the neighborhood, and a regular participant in the recently initiated 57th Street Art Fair. Abercrombie’s presence at the fair, with her old Rolls Royce parked nearby, as well as her regular appearances in the community attired in a peaked cap that made her resemble a witch, caught the attention of many in the community. A photograph taken at the 1952 57th St. Fair (fig. 1) of the artist and her husband, Frank Sandiford, with Oliver Merriam, the Alderman’s son, and the old Rolls Royce behind them, indicates that Abercrombie and the Alderman were well acquainted by this time.

She also had a long relationship with Merriam’s successor, Leon Despres, who served as her attorney and owned a number of her paintings. Alderman Merriam’s Shells was completed in late 1951, and, according to Abercrombie’s own records, given early in 1952 to Dr. John Reynolds as payment for an operation. The painting retains a sticker from an exhibition originally taped to the frame identifying the artwork’s title and Dr. Reynolds as the lender. It also carries an inscription originally on the paper backing that reads, “From John T. Reynolds.”

Alderman Merriam’s Shells has an extensive exhibition history that begins in April 1952, a year in which Abercrombie was the subject of a remarkable five solo shows. That year the painting was exhibited at Edwin Hewitt Gallery in New York; Stevens-Gross Gallery and Newman Brown Gallery in Chicago; and Bresler Gallery in Milwaukee. In 1953, it was exhibited at her solo shows at the Contemporary Arts Gallery in Evanston and the Design Center in Chicago. The Newman Brown exhibit was the subject of “Likes to Paint Simple things which are a Little Strange” (Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 14, 1952), in which Alderman Merriam’s Shells is pictured along with the actual shells that were its subjects, as well as a number of other paintings in the exhibition (fig. 2). The painting was offered for sale in a number of these venues, at prices ranging from $50-$150. One might conclude that Dr. Reynolds would have been willing to sell it if an offer was made; however, the painting was purchased by the current owner this year at a Michigan estate sale. There is no doubt as to the authenticity of this work, and it possesses a very interesting history.

Abercrombie’s interest in shells was probably inspired by her good friend John Wilde, a Wisconsin native who, like her, was a figurative artist with a surreal bent. Wilde valued craft and precision, and his work was as finished and refined as the Renaissance artists he admired. It was probably through him that Abercrombie was introduced to Edwin Hewitt, a New York gallerist who showed Magic Realist art. As noted above, Alderman Merriam’s Shells was exhibited in her single exhibition there in 1952, but Hewitt never showed her work again, which suggests she was producing too much too quickly, thus implying a sloppiness. Wilde suggested that she focus on details and precision in her work, something she had trouble doing consistently, particularly when she had to meet deadlines for the many exhibitions to which she was committed in the early 1950s. Abercrombie struggled with these stylistic issues and wrote to Wilde in late 1951 that she was, “giving up trying to be real,” but she “wish[ed] he could see her shells.” A beautiful, highly detailed painting of shells on a beach by Wilde from 1951 (now in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art), was in her estate, and it must have provided first-hand inspiration.

The early 1950s was one of Abercrombie’s most productive periods; she worked assiduously, necessitated at least in part by concerns over money. Her marriage to Bob Livingston, a lawyer and good provider, ended in 1948. She then married Frank Sandiford, a reformed small-time criminal turned record store salesperson, which changed her economic situation. As a result, the artist produced numerous tiny paintings, often of single shells, that were sometimes made into pins or brooches with frames of her design fabricated by a jeweler. These were sold at local art fairs as well as other exhibition venues to make ends meet. 

Abercrombie almost certainly accumulated a collection of shells of her own after using Alderman Merriam’s as models for the present painting. A number of varieties recur regularly in her work, many of which appear in the borrowed collection. The conch, the snail shell, and the auger (depicted in the painting pinned to an imaginary wall) appear in her work both individually and in more complex compositions, in paintings that range in size from tiny to large (for Abercrombie). Like the many other things she painted consistently—cats, owls, stoneware vessels, Victorian furniture—shells became personal emblems. Throughout the artist’s career, she painted rooms, usually spare and ascetic, closed and impenetrable, which resonated with her own feelings of loneliness and insecurity. Abercrombie also did many paintings in which tents, a more precarious kind of enclosure, feature prominently. The shell is another kind of home, at once protective and confining, a contained space that may have also appealed to Abercrombie thematically. She even played with this idea in her compositions that depict a woman, rather than a snail, emerging from a shell (see In and Out, 1966, Private Collection, and For Once in my Life, 1969, Private Collection) or having an owl or an eye peek out of a small round shell hole. These works, among others, display the artist’s visual wit. 

While Abercrombie was certainly capable of making a perspectival image in which objects appear to exist in a believable environment, Alderman Merriam’s Shells shows a more abstract, liminal space. The artist depicts the individual shells with careful detail, each of which occupies their own space and displays the view that is most characteristic of the object’s individual personality. They seem to almost float on the surface of the painting until the auger is reached. Hanging above the other shells on their planar surface, it is pinned firmly to a deep black backdrop, an indicator that what appears to be infinite is in fact not. Each impossibly positioned to its best angle on the surface, the shells seem to glimmer in their own aureole light source. And yet, as in all of the best Abercrombie compositions, it feels completely balanced, beautifully composed, and replete with the mystery and simple “strangeness” of her finest work. 

Framed: 15 x 12 x 2 1/4 inches.

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