Echoes of Whistler
Despite many differences, Pat Steir is carrying on an artistic enterprise that we could first date to James McNeill Whistler a century earlier. In this painting of Valparaiso Harbor, Whistler emptied the image of narrative and pictorial elements in order to unearth the deeper ways we understand nature. Both artists, I think, want us to know something fundamental about how we perceive and create the world around us.
I've never seen a printed or online reproduction of this painting that could come close to showing the subtlety of these warm colors. Looking at the real painting, you notice how the painted areas have a presence and a substance distinct from the bare canvas. These colors evoke dunes, earth, flesh, and blood. The delicate pencil marks and shadings in the large field of sand-rose-coral create a rich variety of touch and expression within a narrow tonal range. Whistler would have admired that.
Pictured left: James McNeill Whistler, Valparaiso Harbor, 1866; oil, 30 1/4 x 20 1/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.
Pictured right: Pat Steir, Looking for the Mountain,
1971; oil, pencil, crayon, and ink, 92 3/8 x 75 1/4 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Richard M. Hollander in honor of Jean S. Lighton.
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