Discovering Gertrude Abercrombie

Well, welcome back to the studio, Zach. It's always fun to have you and Freeman's Auctions here. You guys always bring me interesting and fun and storied projects, and I'm assuming this is no different. So give me a rundown of what this painting is, who it's by, and why you brought it here. Today I've brought in a gorgeous Gertrude Abercrombie painting, and this was one that was tremendously exciting to see come through. There's a lot of found Gertrude Abercrombies that don't end up being Gertrude Abercrombies, but this one, as soon as I clicked on the images, I knew immediately that it was the real deal. And as I read the email, I saw that Susan Weininger, the leading expert and the artist, had already confirmed the work, and then kind of read further to see that it had a fascinating backstory. The consigner happened to find the work, of all places, in an estate sale. Okay, not uncommon, right? Well, not uncommon at one point, but as her stature has increased, currently has a traveling retrospective, so the work has become much more in demand with these shows, the price points that they're achieving. So finding them in the old places where one might, you know, in garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales, are not quite as common. I don't think I've ever met somebody who has seen her work and not fall in love with it. Either the charminess, or the weirdness, or the comprehensive universe she built of language and symbols, it's just really compelling. Absolutely. I mean, you hear the word kind of world creation thrown a lot around these days, and she's kind of, I think, ahead of the curve on that. You know, she sort of created this environment of imagination with all these kind of symbols, as you said, talismans, as stand-ins for herself. So it's all kind of self-portraiture in a weird way, or autobiographical. You know, this one is interesting in that it was painted from observation, which is something that we don't often see from her. Interesting. So the title of this painting is Alderman Miriam's Shells. The title refers to the alderman of Hyde Park at the time that this was painted, and this work was literally painted from a collection of shells that the alderman had put together and loaned to her, and she painted from life. We've since been able to kind of track down an old newspaper article about Abercrombie, where you see this painting and the actual arrangements of the shells. Oh, no kidding. That is so cool. So certainly at that time was when the shell motif came into her vocabulary. They're kind of this protective object, and then it's also holding something within, and so it plays into that kind of mysteriousness that she seems so attracted to. And I think that's something that's really unique about the way that Abercrombie created her worlds, so to speak. All of the objects are pretty simple. They're pretty obvious. We come to them with understanding of them, but the way she uses them, the way she places them, the way she paints them, it's very approachable. Her work is very easy to get into, and then it's also very easy to fall deeper and deeper into it, to start exploring, like you said, what are the themes that she's playing with? How does she understand these shells? Absolutely, and I mean decoding is kind of the thing, and I think that that is what I think everyone kind of tries to figure out. What kind of arrangement, what kind of spell she's creating with these formulas, and repetition was a thing for her. And I think that the incredible thing for me is sort of this idea that so much of what she did was out of her imagination, and to see that sort of it was originally rooted in reality. And going back to that magical realist thing, that she is taking something that is real, and then using her creativity, her imagination, injecting her own creative magic into it, and then making it something different. I don't often talk about the value of paintings, but this is a case where I think you just can't avoid it, because it's just so fantastic. To me what's fascinating is the price that he paid at the listed price for the painting, you know, in 52 and 53. Gertrude had it priced at $150. Right, so $150 in 1952 or 53 is what, like $2,000 give or take, something like that? Something of that nature. 75 years ago, $150, and you guys are adding three zeros to it. Indeed, which is just sort of our suggestion of where it will start, and not necessarily where it will land. And, you know, I don't know if this will be one of the ones that has a fourth zero added to it, but that's where her prices are landing at the market today. It's remarkable. It's in great condition. I mean, for a 75-year-old painting, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. It's on Masonite, we have no breaks, we have no major paint loss, so we really have a pristine survivor. And still in the original frame, so we can have it from the photo, which is, you know, part of the appeal. I have to ask, why is it even here? Because it's in such perfect condition. I mean, you know, it's got a little bit of age, a little bit of wear and tear. It is a far cry from so many of the patients we have here. Sure. So, I mean, as an auction house, you know, we love to say that we sell things as is, you know, just as a rule. And, you know, usually we let the buyer decide whether or not they want to conserve something. We're very in favor of conservation. People can be very finicky about who's doing the work to some degree. Or about what work is done, or how it's done, or how the process unfolds. And just want to be involved in the process. And in this instance, despite there not being a lot going on, I think there's enough going on that is distracting in its current state, that it will just take this treasure and really make it shine like the jewel that it is. So, you know, I'm seeing some clouding in the varnish. Areas that are blotchy, some are shiny, some have kind of gone completely matte or fallen in, as we say. The biggest thing that I'm wondering is if some additional colors will pop, if we can kind of remove that grime, remove that kind of clouded varnish. Our job isn't to make the painting better. Our job is to make the painting as the artist determined it was finished. So to bring it back to where the artist said, my masterpiece is done, I love it, sign it. You know, over time, life happens, things happen to paintings. And while we love to have this idea that it's here in the studio, the P word is a bad word, the patina. It's not. It's just the accumulation of grime and dust and dirt and compromised materials and ill-fated attempts at cleaning, things like that. And those things all conspire against the integrity of the artist and the work, because they've changed it over time. While there's one camp that feels like that's appropriate to keep and preserve, I think there's a very strong counter-argument. I am on the side of that counter-argument, that if we are truly trying to see the artist's vision and to see the object that they created, it is incumbent upon us to try to do that. And we can't do that if we are looking at the painting through grime and dirt and old varnish and some splatter and stuff like that on it. So I'm glad that you guys have chosen to take that approach with this painting, because having worked on hundreds of her works, I know what's under here. This one is not as involved as some other cases that we brought your way. But I still get a percentage of the final hammer price, right? Right? That was fine by the way. That's still being negotiated. I love Abercrombie's work. I find it really compelling. And so every time I get one of these, I get a little excited that I get to maybe be one hand along a chain of people that are bringing her work to a broader public, to prominence, and into the history books. So it's a great privilege. And I thank you Zach and Freemans for trusting me with this piece. And I will be sitting with bated breath on October 1st for the final hammer to come down. And then waiting for my check. Of course. Yes. The process of conserving this Abercrombie will be relatively straightforward. And the first step is to separate this painting from its frame. Now previously we had cut back this paper backing to see what was behind. We're going to save this because there's some inscription on it that we want to keep for posterity. And we can see that this painting has been held into its frame with what looks like glazers points. These are what are used to hold glass in old windows. And these are okay, but we're going to replace them with something better. So they need to come out. Once removed, I can simply lift the painting out of the frame, taking care because sometimes paintings get stuck to the frame after they've been in there for a long time. And we don't want any of the paint to come off. Luckily, that wasn't the case with this painting. And it comes out well, simply. It's now that we can start thinking about removing this surface grime and the old varnish and cleaning this painting up. But as I look at it more, I want to take a closer look at it, not just with visible light and my naked eye, but under ultraviolet light, which will often tell us what kind of varnish, how much is on and if there's any old work remaining. And under UV light, well, we can see not much, which is really good. Most of the painting is covered in grime and old varnish, but we see no evidence of old historic work. To remove the surface grime, I'm going to be rolling my own swab and dipping it in a neutral organic soap that we mix in the studio. And this will break down the particulates, the oils, the grime that's sitting on the surface. With a little bit of agitation, the grime starts to break down and the swab lifts it up. And we can see just how dirty this painting really is. All of that gray and bluish and brownish grime, well, that's sitting on the we want to see. So who was Gertrude Abercrombie? Well, she was born in 1909 and spent most of her life and painting career in Chicago and developed one of the most interesting and strangest voices in 20th century art. She began painting seriously in the 30s and became a central figure in Chicago's bohemian art and jazz scene. Her Hyde Park home became kind of an informal salon where musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sonny Rollins would gather and play. Abercrombie herself was an improvisationalist pianist and Gillespie reportedly described her as essentially a visual equivalent of a bebop artist. Her paintings are usually small, quiet, and deceptively simple. We repeatedly encounter this world she has built, barren landscapes, empty rooms, moons, owls, black cats, doors, shells, and solitary women. This is her lexicon. But these weren't simply surrealist props. They formed an intensely personal vocabulary of symbols drawn from her dreams, memories, and her own life. Abercrombie once said, it is always myself that I paint. And if we understand that, we can understand her work. Unlike some of the grand theatrical surrealism of other painters like Salvador Dali, Abercrombie's world was restrained and disciplined. She strips out everything unnecessary. A woman stands in an empty landscape. A door opens to nowhere. A moon hangs above a barren tree. Nothing overly frightening is happening, yet everything feels slightly unsettling, as though we've just walked into somebody else's dream and arrived just after something happened, or just before something is about to happen. And really that's what makes these paintings so compelling. They're psychologically specific without ever completely explaining themselves. They leave themselves for us to decode. They deal with solitude, identity, anxiety, desire, and the strange interior worlds that we all carry around with us, but they never quite tell us what we're supposed to see. Abercrombie described wanting to paint, quote, simple things that are a little strange. And that's exactly what she accomplished. Paintings that initially seem naive in their simplicity, but become increasingly mysterious and compelling the more that we look at them. After removing all the grime, I switched to a resin soap to remove the old varnish. And with half of it gone, we can see the difference in ultraviolet light. This resin soap that we mix in the studio operates on the principle of like removes like, in that we could certainly use varnish to remove old varnish, but that would be adding more varnish, and ultimately the solvents in the varnish might be too aggressive for the paint layer underneath. So we mix up a resin soap which has the same properties as an old varnish, and it allows us to soften it up and remove it without exposing the painting to the solvents that we would otherwise use to remove a varnish. And that's because this painting is a little bit more delicate, a little bit more fragile, and we want to be extra careful with it. As we apply the resin soap and agitate it with a soft brush, and then come back with a swab and lift it up, we can see the colors come to life. All of those delicate colors, the pinks, the whites, the blues, that Abercrombie laid down when she was painting these shells become visible. Exactly what Zach was hoping for. And it's in this transformation that the painting really comes to life, and we get to see the full broad spectrum not only of Gertrude's skill as a painter, but the world she created. Now when it comes to her signature, we're taking extra extra care. I'm scraping off the majority of the old varnish with a scalpel, because I don't want to abrade the surface. Once I've removed as much as I feel I can with the scalpel, I'll come back with the resin soap and make a very light quick pass to pick up any remaining residues. And then the painting is ready for retouching. Well, almost ready for retouching. Before I apply any retouching paints, I'm going to apply an isolation layer. In this case, the varnish layer. Sometimes we use two layers of resin. In this case, I'm just going to use one. Before applying the varnish, I'll make several passes with my bare hand over the surface of the painting. And bare hand is really important here, because it allows me to feel if there's anything still on the surface that would get stuck in the varnish and become a distraction. Once I'm certain that the painting surface is ready for that varnish, it can be applied with brush. Because this painting is so small, it doesn't need to be sprayed, and it takes very little time. But it's still important to get it right. Using a natural bristle brush that holds a large quantity of varnish, I'll simply paint it on the surface, making sure to cover all of the painting. And then I'll go around and start distributing it. And you can see just how much those colors change. How much they become full of life and range. It takes several passes to even out this varnish and make sure that it has the sheen that I want. As the varnish is drying and the solvent is evaporating, I'll keep making passes horizontally, then vertically, into the varnish. And this bristle brush will create a very very fine, almost micro texture, that gives me a really beautiful, really glittery finish that just looks absolutely spectacular on Abercrombie paintings. And then it's time to retouch this painting. I mentioned that there really wasn't much retouching at all, but there's always just a little bit. There are some little spots of white that are visible, and little areas of nicks that we want to address. Because it's such a small painting, small things become really large. And so we'll make sure to go over this piece several times, and any little area that we find as a distraction, we will consider for retouching. Because I'm using conservation-specific paints, if in the future someone decides to remove the varnish and my retouching, well it will be simple as one, two, three. While the work on the painting is now almost complete, I can turn my attention to the frame. We debated whether we were going to clean this frame or not. It's really quite dirty, but unfortunately it's so fragile that any cleaning might disrupt the finish that Abercrombie applied to the surface. So instead, we're just going to be removing this taped-on label. Now originally this label was stuck on, the paper was probably sticky, and then at some point somebody taped it to the surface to keep it from getting lost, which is something we never like to see. Pressure-sensitive tape is really one of the bad words in conservation, but unfortunately this is what we have. So using my hot air pen, which is a device that just outputs a stream of controlled heated air, I can soften up the adhesive, holding this tape down, and peel it up. And it doesn't take any paint with it, it just removes the adhesive from the surface. And then we have that label safe. With that label removed, we can clean up the back. And this is going to be removing this old paper that was glued down at some point in the past. This is not original, and we want to get rid of it. So I'm using some laponite, which is a synthetic clay saturated in water. It's basically a gelled water, and it will soften up the paper and the adhesive that's holding the paper to this frame. And then once it's soft, after a few minutes, I can come back with a palette knife, a scraper, and begin removing all of this paper and adhesive residue. We want the frame as Abercrombie had decided it was finished, and that's without all of this gunk and grime. It's not terribly difficult to remove, but it makes a big impact. Unfortunately, it takes a little bit longer than I had anticipated, but such is life. The painting was cleaned very easily, so of course something has to be problematic. Now remember a minute ago when we removed that old tape label from the top of the frame? Well, in doing so, we revealed, ironically, the frame's original color, but that now stands as a disparate element. It looks like damage, so we need to reintegrate it with the rest of the frame. And here I'm using some watercolor and just doing a little bit of retouching to make sure that that lighter area is now blended in with the rest of the frame. And because this is watercolor, in the future, if anybody wants to remove it, they can, and they can reveal just what's underneath. With the frame clean, I can now turn my attention to the labels that we salvaged from the back of the frame. And these are really important historical documents, and if they were lost through carelessness or deliberately discarding them, well, they'd be lost forever, and that would be a crime against art. So we're going to save them. First, I'm going to trim down this craft paper to a smaller size, and then I'm going to align it and the tape with the label on it onto a piece of museum board, which is acid-free cotton rag board. And then I'm going to cut down a piece, and then once that's cut down, I'm going to use some acrylic adhesive just on the edges to mount both of these labels down to that board. While that adhesive is drying, I can prepare the frame to receive the painting. And the first step is installing this strip of acid-free foam on the surface of the rabbit where the painting will rest. And this will do a few things. One, it will cushion the painting so that it doesn't get abraded or scratched, and prevent it from getting stuck to the wood. It will also prevent any tannins in the wood from leeching onto the painting and damaging that paint layer. It's a small step, but it makes a big difference. And then into the frame goes the painting. It's actually quite simple to put a very small painting like this into its frame. I'll take the label, I've wrapped it in a piece of mylar film, and I'm going to screw it into the back of the frame. I want to keep these labels with the frame and the painting. So a couple of brass screws, and it'll hold it in place and keep it visible for the future. It will also keep it protected so that nobody scratches them or accidentally loses them. Now instead of using glazers points, I'm using offset brackets. And then the final piece is my label, which will likely get peeled off by the future owners, but this does contain important information like the ID number which references the proposal and the documentation that I've created for this painting. It also contains some materials that were used for varnishing and retouching for the next conservator. And there it is. Gertrude Abercrombie. Alderman Merriman's Shells. 1951. Oil on Masonite. A unique and interesting painting. One of Gertrude Abercrombie's compelling worlds, this time created from life. An assembly of shells, seemingly simple, that informed the rest of her work throughout her career. This painting stands as the genesis of this lexicon. The beginning of a new symbol that she would carry with her throughout her career. Beautiful, delicate, and yes, just like Abercrombie, a little strange. When the painting arrived, it was not in bad condition, but it was drab, missing its life. But now cleaned, retouched, and revarnished, it's alive and radiant. Gertrude Abercrombie's strange and compelling world is now ready to consume us.