Marvin Cone

(American, 1891-1964)

Cook’s Barn No. 2

oil on canvas

signed Marvin Cone (lower left)

16 x 34 inches.

Property from the Collection of Lon and Wilmia Ramsey, Winnetka, Illinois

This painting will be included as no. 1940.001 in Joseph S. Czestochowski's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work to be published by International Arts® at www.catrais.org.

We wish to thank him for his assistance cataloguing this lot.

Cook’s Barn No. 2 is in a frame crafted by Marvin Cone.

Provenance:

The Artist

Lon and Wilmia Ramsey, Winnetka, Illinois

By descent to the present owner

Exhibited:

Davenport, Iowa, Davenport Municipal Art Gallery [now Figge Art Museum], First Exhibition of the Art and Artists along the Mississippi, April 4 - 30, 1940, no. 21

Literature:

Joseph S. Czestochowski, Marvin D. Cone: Art as Self Portrait, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1989, no. 398

Lot note:

Barns were among Cone's most popular subjects, constantly sought after by friends and the general public well into the 1950s. When he began to paint the barns surrounding Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the late 1930s, these iconic structures were already around about a hundred years old, in a state of decline, and rapidly being replaced by modern, more efficient buildings. These scenes were usually devoid of the transient distraction of any human presence and are carefully structured and geometrically ordered.

Though Marvin Cone's work is often described as Regionalist in the tradition of his lifelong friend Grant Wood, Cone avoided the cultural implications often found in the work of his contemporaries. He instead focused on subjects, including barns, that captivated his interest and presented a compositional challenge, and the potential for an interesting design that displayed his technical skill. He sought to express the essence of his surroundings, rather than an accurate copy.

Cone spent his entire life as an artist working in Cedar Rapids, where he grew up, raised a family, and taught painting at the local Coe College for over forty years. Joseph S. Czestochowski writes, "… Cone concentrated on the landscape of the Midwest, capturing the special nuances of mid-western light and the complex formations of land and sky. These scenes, which rarely include people, are reminiscent of the Iowa countryside, but without topographic precision. To the artist, the landscape had a poignant reality that was nonetheless unpredictable and elusive. Nature's sublimity, greater than its mere physical qualities, was Cone's principal pursuit" (Marvin D. Cone: An American Tradition, New York, 1985, p. 1).

Another version of the present painting, titled Cook’s Barn No. 1, was painted in 1939-40, and was a wedding gift to his daughter and son-in-law in 1947. Cook’s Barn No. 1 was sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 2004.