Pomegranate and Persimmons

Stanton Macdonald-Wright's color woodcut print Pomegranate and Persimmons is a spare still life image of orange and red fruit on a white cloth with its folds and shadows defined by strokes of blue-gray. Macdonald-Wright carefully balanced warm colors with cool ones, and neat spherical forms with the amorphous expanse of soft rumpled fabric that seems to float in space. The simplicity of the composition, with its few forms and undefined setting, dramatizes the startlingly bright colors of the pair of persimmons and the single pomegranate. These fruits may have appealed to the artist for the intensity of their hues; they also carry associations with ancient Greek mythology, in the case of the pomegranate, and with China and Japan, in the case of the persimmons. The exoticism of Macdonald-Wright's subject, as well as the reductive nature of his treatment, recall an earlier still life, the watercolor painting Seven Plums in a Chinese Bowl (TF 1992.4), by his contemporary Charles Demuth.

Pomegranate and Persimmons synthesizes several of Macdonald-Wright's sources and interests. It reveals the artist's reverence for the still life images of such modern masters as French artists Paul Cezanne (1839–1906), who explored the abstract geometry of forms, and Henri Matisse (1869–1954), creator of works in pure, flat color. Macdonald-Wright also admired the subtlety of Asian ink painting, whose delicate purity he translated into this print. Early in his career he and fellow American artist Morgan Russell (1886–1953) founded a movement in painting called synchromism, an attempt to compose in pure color as a visual equivalent of musical composition, and Macdonald-Wright remained intensely interested in color theory throughout his career. Long an admirer of Chinese and Japanese art, he was drawn to color printmaking during a 1952 trip to Japan, where he encountered modern Japanese woodcuts. Made late in his career, Pomegranate and Persimmons is among the earliest prints he made, although the artist's idiosyncratic practice of dating each impression with the date when he signed it—here 1964 rather than the original creation date of 1953—has caused confusion regarding the chronology of his printmaking.

Permanent collection installation, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–August 27, 1997.

Figures and Forms: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 9–July 9, 2000.

L'Amérique et les Modernes, 1900–1950 (American Moderns, 1900–1950), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 25–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

Acton, David et al. A Spectrum of Innovation, Color in American Printmaking 1890–1960. (exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum). New York and London, England: W. W. Norton & Company and the Worcester Art Museum, 1990. Text pp. 202, 273; ill. no. 78, p. 203.

Stanton Macdonald-Wright, A Retrospective Exhibition 1911–1970. (exh. cat., University of California Los Angeles Art Galleries). Los Angeles, California: Grunwald Graphic Arts Foundation, 1970. No. 116. [Note: the impression cited, from the artist's collection, is dated "1964," and could possibly be the same impression as what is now in the Terra's collection. Marilyn Symmes Survey, 2003.]

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. American Moderns, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text pp. 50, 61 (checklist); pl. 22, p. 50 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]

Cartwright, Derrick R. and Paul J. Karlstrom. L'Amérique et les modernes, 1900–1950. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text pp. 50, 61 (checklist); pl. 22, p. 50 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]