George Tooker 1920-2011

Hewitt Galleries, New York
Robert Issacson Gallery, New York
ACA Galleries, New York
Private Collection, New York, 1971 (acquired from the above)
By descent to the present owner (their daughter)

Brooklyn, New York, The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn & Long Island Artists Biennial Exhibition, May-September 1958 (as The Laundress)
New York, DC Moore Gallery, George Tooker: Reality Recurs as a Dream, June-August 2011

Thomas H. Garver, George Tooker, Petaluma, California, 1992, p. 144, illustrated

This work is in very good condition. There is one pindot of loss in the upper center sky. Under UV: There is no apparent inpainting.
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Painted in 1959, Laundresses is evocative of George Tooker’s distinctively enigmatic style. Although the painting’s restrained color palette and limited spatial recession create a relatively flat scene, its numerous curving and straight lines render dynamic shapes and delineations of space. Faint lines are also employed to divide the faces of the women, curiously fusing two faces into one, resembling a cubist rendering of the human figure. This depiction of an everyday experience imbued with an undeniable sense of the surreal exemplifies the dreamlike nature that characterized Tooker’s works during the 1950s. At the same time, the painting seems to embody the artist’s own description of his career aims: “I am after painting reality impressed on the mind so hard that it returns as a dream, but I am not after painting dreams as such, or fantasy” (Thomas H. Garver, George Tooker, Petaluma, California, 1992, p. 10). 

Tooker found stylistic inspiration in the traditional Renaissance artists, but he utilized their technique, attention to detail, and penchant for the tempera medium to create his own imaginary, mysterious, and distinctly modern compositions. His technical ability with tempera is demonstrated in his rendering of the intertwining, draping laundry ropes, the architectural framework, and the outlines of the figures—precise details of the composition that also appear in the preparatory drawing for the painting, in the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art (Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts).