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Lot Essay
"It is necessary for me to utterly repudiate so-called good painting in order to be free to express that which is visually true to me…My aim is to project images that seem vital to me...images...that seem to have meaning in terms of feeling." - Bob Thompson
The classical, bucolic landscape is modernized through expressive application of color and facture in Bob Thompson’s 1965 The Recreation of Cephalus and Procris. Exhibited in the seminal 1998 Whitney retrospective on the artist, the present canvas is a top-quality example of Thompson’s mature practice. In The Recreation, Thompson’s command of color, form, and art historical reference are on full display, asserting him as an indubitable master Post-War figurative painting.
Faceless figures rendered in vibrant orange, yellow, and teal bask against a lush, verdant landscape. Thompson reduces the human form to near abstraction, bringing bold color and compositional dynamism to the fore. The diagonal lines of the valley, in tandem with the unfettered chromatic palette, create a visual rhythm that guides the viewer throughout the composition. The gently sloping hill in the top left ignites a continuous zigzag down the cobalt river, punctuated by the lazing figures along its banks. Thompson’s attentive, controlled brushwork in the foreground becomes increasingly expressive in the emerald green passages of the trees, the golden swirls of light breaching the clouds.
After studying painting at the University of Louisville in his home state of Kentucky, Thompson moved to New York’s Lower East Side, where he held his first solo show at the Delancey Street Museum in 1960. Immersed in the vibrant cultural scenes of New York, Thompson's work was deeply influenced by his passion for art history, particularly Baroque and Renaissance painters. This passion eventually led Thompson to Europe on the John Hay Whitney fellowship, where he lived in London, Paris, Ibiza, and Rome, surrounded by and closely studying the works of European Old Masters.
A result of this productive period, The Recreation of Cephalus and Procris directly references Claude Lorrain’s Landscape with Cephalus and Procris reunited by Diana from 1645, a narrative painting inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Claude’s work, the goddess Diana reconciles the huntsman Cephalus and his wife Procris after a marital conflict. However, like Claude, Thompson seems more captivated by the surrounding landscape than by the specifics of the narrative. The natural environment in Claude’s landscape is inspired by the Roman countryside, where he lived for much of his life. Thompson’s work presumably also draws from his direct surroundings, as he executed the painting while residing in Rome.
Thompson’s reinterpretation of the classical scene strips away narrative details in favor of emotional affect. Departing from the meticulous realism of the Old Masters through abstraction and expressive brushwork, he ideates modern interpolations of classical art historical themes. By focusing on the emotional resonance of the landscape and its surrounding figures, Thompson brings a novel perspective to a well-trodden subject, transforming it into a visual experience driven by feeling and sensorial engagement.
In The Recreation of Cephalus and Procris, Bob Thompson brilliantly synthesizes his deep knowledge of art history with his own modern sensibilities. As Thelma Golden notes in her foreword to the Whitney catalogue, “At his most developed, Thompson melded abstraction into his figuration. It was an inspired synthesis, the creation of a style to serve his unique vision of a new contemporary art” (T. Golden in Bob Thompson, exh. cat., New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1998-1999, p. 15).
The classical, bucolic landscape is modernized through expressive application of color and facture in Bob Thompson’s 1965 The Recreation of Cephalus and Procris. Exhibited in the seminal 1998 Whitney retrospective on the artist, the present canvas is a top-quality example of Thompson’s mature practice. In The Recreation, Thompson’s command of color, form, and art historical reference are on full display, asserting him as an indubitable master Post-War figurative painting.
Faceless figures rendered in vibrant orange, yellow, and teal bask against a lush, verdant landscape. Thompson reduces the human form to near abstraction, bringing bold color and compositional dynamism to the fore. The diagonal lines of the valley, in tandem with the unfettered chromatic palette, create a visual rhythm that guides the viewer throughout the composition. The gently sloping hill in the top left ignites a continuous zigzag down the cobalt river, punctuated by the lazing figures along its banks. Thompson’s attentive, controlled brushwork in the foreground becomes increasingly expressive in the emerald green passages of the trees, the golden swirls of light breaching the clouds.
After studying painting at the University of Louisville in his home state of Kentucky, Thompson moved to New York’s Lower East Side, where he held his first solo show at the Delancey Street Museum in 1960. Immersed in the vibrant cultural scenes of New York, Thompson's work was deeply influenced by his passion for art history, particularly Baroque and Renaissance painters. This passion eventually led Thompson to Europe on the John Hay Whitney fellowship, where he lived in London, Paris, Ibiza, and Rome, surrounded by and closely studying the works of European Old Masters.
A result of this productive period, The Recreation of Cephalus and Procris directly references Claude Lorrain’s Landscape with Cephalus and Procris reunited by Diana from 1645, a narrative painting inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Claude’s work, the goddess Diana reconciles the huntsman Cephalus and his wife Procris after a marital conflict. However, like Claude, Thompson seems more captivated by the surrounding landscape than by the specifics of the narrative. The natural environment in Claude’s landscape is inspired by the Roman countryside, where he lived for much of his life. Thompson’s work presumably also draws from his direct surroundings, as he executed the painting while residing in Rome.
Thompson’s reinterpretation of the classical scene strips away narrative details in favor of emotional affect. Departing from the meticulous realism of the Old Masters through abstraction and expressive brushwork, he ideates modern interpolations of classical art historical themes. By focusing on the emotional resonance of the landscape and its surrounding figures, Thompson brings a novel perspective to a well-trodden subject, transforming it into a visual experience driven by feeling and sensorial engagement.
In The Recreation of Cephalus and Procris, Bob Thompson brilliantly synthesizes his deep knowledge of art history with his own modern sensibilities. As Thelma Golden notes in her foreword to the Whitney catalogue, “At his most developed, Thompson melded abstraction into his figuration. It was an inspired synthesis, the creation of a style to serve his unique vision of a new contemporary art” (T. Golden in Bob Thompson, exh. cat., New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1998-1999, p. 15).