Gertrude Abercrombie

We are grateful to Susan Weininger for preparing the following essay:

Countess Nerona reclining on a chaise was a subject Abercrombie painted at least six times between 1942 and 1953, ranging in size from tiny to quite large for the artist. This is one of the four versions, each distinct, that I am familiar with. The provenance is secure, having been acquired by Pete Pollack (as Abercrombie’s records refer to him) in 1951 for $20. It was subsequently sold at Hindman Auctioneers in 2006 and again in 2019. 

The first owner of the painting was an important figure in the Chicago art world. Peter Pollack was the director of the South Side Community Arts Center established by the WPA from 1939-42, a curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1945-57 and the Director of the American Federation of the Arts beginning in 1962. This evidences Abercrombie’s status in the arts community by the time this painting was made in 1951. 

The subject of the painting is based on a character in a novel by Willkie Collins, a 19^th century writer of whom Abercrombie was very fond. The character, Countess Narona (Abercrombie consistently misspelled the name), appears in one of the author’s less successful and less well known novels, The Haunted Hotel, published in 1878. The book is a tale that combines mystery and the paranormal, which was something that always interested the artist. But the real attraction of the story for Abercrombie may have been the main character’s powerful, albeit evil, personality. Abercrombie often included female figures in her paintings, usually clearly identifiable as self-portraits, and often in the guise of a witch or a queen. This conferred on the artist a power that was not hers in ordinary life, as a woman who often felt insecure, lonely and isolated. Abercrombie seems to have identified with this fictional character as well; her power, although deployed for malevolent ends, was substantial, and this was something that Abercrombie sought. She once declared “It is always myself that I paint,” and although Countess Narona does not have the recognizable facial features of the artist, she does have the personal qualities that the artist tried to project in her many other works.

There are other elements in the painting that are familiar from Abercrombie’s oeuvre as well. The chaise is a piece of Victorian furniture that was Abercrombie’s own, although she freely changed the color; she always had a number of cats in her household, and identified with them deeply (when she was expecting her daughter Dinah, she said she could imagine giving birth to a cat, but not a human); and the austere room with a painting on the wall is a meaningful and repeatedly used setting. 

The ascetic room reflects the artist’s inner emptiness and insecurity. The figure is trapped, with no way of getting out. The painting on the wall, although tiny, extends the meaning of the main scene. It is barren, with one leafless and lifeless tree in the center, a sliver of moon and a black bottomed cloud in the sky.  Rather than an escape, it mirrors the interior. 

Abercrombie’s deceptively simple composition, with its minimal elements, is perfectly balanced—the chaise, placed in the corner of the room but slightly tilted, the figure balanced by the very large cat whose color and shape echoes the woman’s neck and head, and the picture on the back wall create a stable yet dynamic three dimensional composition. Even the subtle color variations of the walls and floor are picked up in the painting on the wall to create a compelling work of art. Like the best works by the artist, there is mystery, wit, and nuanced feeling in this image of a complex woman.