Joan Mitchell

Stable Gallery, New York
Estate of the Artist
Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in January 1996

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1965 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, December 1965 - January 1966, cat. no. 87, illustrated (titled First Tree)
New York, Robert Miller Gallery, Joan Mitchell: My Black Paintings...1964, October - November 1994, pl. no. 20, illustrated in color

Klaus Kertess, Joan Mitchell, New York, 1997, pl. no. 43, illustrated in color

This painting is in very good condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art Department at 212-606-7254 for a condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. This work is framed in a white painted food strip frame with a float.
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.
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The power and sophistication of Joan Mitchell's First Cypress from 1964 can be attributed to the evolution of an artist who devoted all of her creative soul to the portrayal of landscapes.  Mitchell did not paint directly from nature; instead she preferred to paint based on sensory memories of landscapes and the feelings they evoked. Although she was deeply influenced and respected by her colleagues among the Abstract Expressionists, Mitchell forged her own path and aesthetic separate from any particular movement.  In New York's macho and highly charged art world of the 1940s and 1950s, Mitchell was in the minority and soon exited by moving to Paris, at first splitting her time between the two continents until 1960 when she permanently relocated to France.  Mitchell struggled throughout her life with a deep sense of isolation and an intense fear of death.  In 1963 her father passed away and her mother was suffering from a prolonged illness. Painted in a time of such intense emotions, First Cypress marks the height of Mitchell's expressive power.  This brooding painting harnesses the properties of spatial relations, color and brushwork inherent to Mitchell, while inviting chance and temperament to intervene.  The paintings from the 1960s are, as Klaus Kertess notes, "a kind of painful, shifting dialectic between chaos and order."  (Klaus Kertess, Joan Mitchell, New York, 1997, p. 18)

The eloquent dark at the center of First Cypress is a dominant feature in Mitchell's works from the mid 1960s, expressed in green during this period as if evoking the essence of all nature.  The roiling mass of tonal greens is anchored to the canvas by an overlay of flung pigment of brighter hues.  The dense impasto and muscular brushwork stands out against the softer pale washes of the light background.  The brushstrokes in the left half of the canvas have a fluid and calligraphic quality that is in contrast with the heavily weighted central form.  There is an overriding sense of paint as a physical and tactile material in Mitchell's work - very much within the rhetoric of the Abstract Expressionist and Action painters.  Mitchell was also influenced by the work of Cézanne and Matisse, particularly their ability to flatten pictorial space.  The titles of Mitchell's paintings from 1964 are based on either the names of trees that deeply moved her or her remembrances of places seen on sailing trips. In a statement from 1965 Mitchell notes, "I'm trying to remember what I felt about a certain cypress tree and I feel if I remember it, it will last me quite a long time." (Judith Bernstock, Joan Mitchell, New York, 1988, p. 66)