Unfinished painting | Harvard Art Museums

Identification and Creation

Recorded Ownership History: Collection of Barnett and Annalee Newman
The Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation

Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Gift of the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation
Copyright: © The Barnett Newman Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Year: 2007
Object Number: 2007.100.75
Contact: am_straus@harvard.edu
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Description: A reassembled composite of fragments of an unfinished painting. Annalee Newman, the artist's widow, destroyed the unfinished work according to her husband's wishes, by cutting the painted canvas up into many fragments. Some time later, she had the fragments reassembled and lined onto a supplementary canvas. Some of the cut lines have been filled with a white fill material, but all of the cuts are left visible. The original orientation of the unfinished painting is not known, but the canvas is unevenly bisected into white and blue fields. The blue field appears to be painted on a white ground layer, with a darker blue layer underneath a lighter blue upper layer. The reassembled unfinished painting is mounted on a wooden stretcher with staples on the unpainted margins. There appears to be an artist applied coating, applied irregularly with a large brush overall. There is also discolored adhesive residue overall, which may be from the lining process.