Pavel Fedorovich Tchelitchew

New York, Gallery of Modern Art, Pavel Tchelitchew, March-April 1964, no. 127
Syracuse, Everson Museum of Art, Pavel Tchelitchew, September-October 1983
New York, Midtown Payson Gallery, Pavel Tchelitchew: A Reevaluation, September-November 1994
Katonah, Katonah Museum of Art, Pavel Tchelitchew: The Landscape of the Body, June-September 1998
New York, DC Moore Gallery, Interwoven Lives, George Platt Lynes and Friends, September-October 2001

Gallery of Modern Art, Pavel Tchelitchew, New York, 1964, p. 60, no. 127
Katonah Museum of Art, Pavel Tchelitchew: The Landscape of the Body, Katonah, 1998, p. 50

Gouache on board. The surface is dirty. There are nails visible along the outer edges of the composition, near the matting. There are some minor abrasions, paint loss and scratches to the surface, including a small scratch above the sitter's head, a scratch near the center of the right edge, and a scratch near his left arm and shoulder. In overall good condition. Held in a gold painted wood frame and under glass with cloth matte. Unexamined out of frame.
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Portrait of Charles Henri Ford with Pitcher was executed in 1933, two years after Ford and Tchelitchew first met in Paris. Ford was Tchelitchew's muse; the artist's palette and tonality brightened significantly in the years after their initial meeting. Tchelitchew painted a number of related portraits that year, including the well-known Portrait of Charles in a Wheatfield with Poppies. In each of these pictures, and specifically in the present work, the artist presents Charles brilliantly lit from within; he glows against the dark blues and blacks of the background, his eyes are luminous. Such treatment prefigures Tchelitchew's later experimentations with the interaction of light, anatomy and the cosmos, themes developed in his Interior Landscapes and Space Compositions of the 1940s and 1950s. In the present work, the pitcher adds a dramatic and surreal component to the portrait; light seems to glow from within the pitcher itself, sending a cosmic burst of electric energy beyond the boundaries of the glass. Charles appears stoic; he holds the pitcher at a distance, seemingly conjuring the energy and imagery within.