Lee Krasner

Estate of the Artist
Marlborough Gallery, New York
Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York
Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Maremont Foundation, Chicago
Bequest to the present owner from the above

East Hampton, Signa Gallery, Lee Krasner: Paintings, 1947- 59, July - August 1959
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Lee Krasner, Paintings, Drawings and Collages, September - October 1965, no. 17, illustrated
East Hampton, Guild Hall Museum; New York University, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, Krasner/Pollock: A Working Relationship, August - December 1981, no. 51, illustrated 
Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Norfolk, Chrysler Museum; Phoenix Art Museum; New York, Museum of Modern Art,  Lee Krasner: A Restrospective, November 1983 - February 1985, no. 60
Greenville, South Carolina, Greenville County Museum of Art (Extended Loan)
 

Cindy Nemser, "Lee Krasner's Paintings 1946-1949," ArtForum, 1973, p. 64, illustrated
Charles Morritz, ed., "Krasner, Lee," New York Magazine, March 1974, p. 23
Kay Lason, "The Odd Couple," New York Magazine, November 23, 1981, p. 73
Anne M. Wagner, "Lee Krasner as L.K." in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds., The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, New York, 1992, p. 430, illustrated
Anne M. Wagner, "Fictions: Krasner's Presence, Pollock's Absence," in Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership, London, 1993, p. 235, illustrated
Ellen G. Landau, Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1995, p. 114, no. 235, illustrated

This work is in very good condition overall. Please refer to the following condition report prepared by Simon Parkes Art Conservation. 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.

 

Night Light of 1948 is one of the few, key paintings Krasner made between 1947 and 1950, belonging to her series of "Little Image" paintings, in which hieroglyphs, cuneiform, and other symbols reveal themselves slowly from under layers of paint. A sense of Krasner's facture is created by a dense web like overlay of paint. Night Light's significance is shown through its considerable scale and early date, which prefigures her iconic splashy, scrawled paintings of the 1950s. The critic Barbara Rose describes the "Little Image" series in the catalogue to Krasner's retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art: "There is a delicacy and filigree-like quality in the art of both Krasner and Pollock in the late forties. The dense, resistant surface Krasner patiently builds up with her continuous overlays of patterning and dripping until they form an almost relief-like crust of impasto once again recalls Mondrian's late work." At this time, Krasner and Pollock began spending much of their time in Springs, New York, which Rose surmises reflects itself in Krasner's vegetal markings: "Although Krasner's Little Image paintings are unquestionably nonobjective works, they hint at a dimension of metaphor. Krasner's metaphor is not at this point the human unconscious but the beauty of the structures of nature... There is a quality of the crystalline about her Little Image paintings."