Robert Motherwell

Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection, New York (acquired circa 1973)
By descent to the present owner from the above circa 1985

New York, Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, Painting and Collages by Robert Motherwell, May 1948

Robert Saltonstall Mattison, Robert Motherwell: The Early Years, Ann Arbor, 1987, pp. 148-9 and 184

This work is in good condition overall with a sound paint layer. There are abundant, stable drying cracks scattered across the surface, visible in the catalogue illustration, and relevant lifting in the area of grey paint located 4 ½"-4 ¾" from the bottom and 11" from the left. Under ultraviolet light, there is evidence of three linear areas of restoration attendant to cracking located as follows: 1 ½" in length, 3" from the right side and 4"-4 ½" from the bottom; 1 ½" in length, 5" from the left and 11"-12 ½" from the top; ½" in length, 8"-8 ½" from the left and 11"-11 ½" the from top. This work is framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Robert Motherwell's Mariner of 1948 is a crucial work within the artist's expansive and expressionist oeuvre. The format of the present painting, particularly relative to the scale of the artist's later body of work, is replete with numerous suggestive forms and compositional elements. The present work aptly titled the Mariner, is a vignette within his poetic Abstract Expressionist essay painted at the time when he frequented the themes of exploration, evidenced in a painting from the same period, The Voyage, 1949: "The title refers to the sense we had in the 1940s of voyaging on unknown seas...and, of course, refers to Baudelaire's famous poem "The Voyage," the last line of which is: 'Au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!' [To the depths of the Unknown to find the new]," (H.H. Arnason, Robert Motherwell, New York, 1982, p. 115).

Reflecting the pioneering spirit of the time, Motherwell, as early as 1943, had initiated some of the most important and prevalent themes of his career.  Works from this period, including the Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive, 1943, presently in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as the present work Mariner are of principal significance as they introduce the artist's employment of ovoid and rectangular forms as a means of channeling emotion and expression through painting. Instigating a formal opposition between the intensely felt emotional elements such as the eccentrically drawn ovals, painterly passages and touches of color and the controlled structure of the vertical and horizontal shapes, Motherwell prefigures his most famous series the Elegies, which he began in 1948 and which virtually define the future of the artist's work.