George Tooker 1920-2011

Marisa Del Re Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owners from the above, 1991

Thomas H. Garver, George Tooker, San Francisco, California, 1992, p. 117, illustrated

George Tooker recognized that he wanted to be an artist at a young age and, while his parents were supportive, they insisted that he pursue a formal university education. In 1938, after graduating from Phillips Academy prep school in Andover, Massachusetts, Tooker enrolled at Harvard, where he studied English literature and spent many hours at the Fogg Art Museum. After graduating from Harvard, Tooker began studying under Reginald Marsh at the Arts Student League in New York City. With Marsh, and later alongside Paul Cadmus, Tooker worked to refine his technique with egg tempera, a medium that was particularly well-suited to the highly-detailed, hyper-realistic paintings that would eventually earn him the moniker "magical realist." When asked about the difficulty of painting in the medium, he responded, "Tempera isn't hard at all. It's a very easy, plodding medium. It's slow, and since I'm slow in knowing just what I want to do, it suits me well." (Thomas Garver, George Tooker,1992, p. 8).

Tooker traditionally painted between two and four pictures per year, but Garden Wall was his only composition in 1990. Of this enigmatic painting, Thomas Garver wrote, "There is warmth of feeling between the figures in Garden Wall that is more akin to siblings then lovers... The two males are receiving instruction from the woman,... but all the figures focus their eyes in the distance and the lesson that is being taught is passing wordlessly but respectfully between them" (George Tooker, 1992, p. 117).