Willem and Elaine de Kooning Visit the Barnes Foundation

Abstract

Although Willem de Kooning’s admiration for the paintings of Chaim Soutine, particularly those in the Barnes Foundation, has been recognized, the precise timing and circumstances of his journey to the private, restricted-access institution in Merion, Pennsylvania, have eluded historical analysis. Archival documentation reveals that Willem de Kooning, together with his wife, painter Elaine de Kooning, visited the foundation on June 3, 1952, thanks to the intervention of Sara Carles Johns. Their visit was likely prompted by an Art News editorial campaign to open the institution’s premises to the public in the aftermath of Albert C. Barnes’s death, but the occasion also proved significant for both artists. The couple’s encounter with the extraordinary group of paintings by Chaim Soutine in the foundation’s collection provided inspiration for Elaine de Kooning’s ongoing work in portraiture and for her husband’s third series of Woman paintings. While she focused on Soutine’s “gesture,” her husband adapted the Parisian expressionist’s tactile sensibility to his own figurative series. Willem de Kooning’s visit to the Barnes Foundation arguably proved catalytic to his resolution of the series, and the visual impact of the foundation’s Soutine collection lingered in his memory for decades. From the activated surfaces of his 1950s abstract landscapes to the luminosity of his 1970s abstractions, de Kooning’s work of later maturity displayed the painterly qualities that he prized in the art of Chaim Soutine in the Barnes Foundation.