May 12, 2022 - Sale 2604

Sale 2604 - Lot 43

Unsold
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
MARY ABBOTT
Untitled.

Oil on canvas, 1950s. 310x380 mm; 12 1/4x15 1/4 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto.

Provenance: Private collection, New York.

This work was painted in Haiti or St. Croix where Abbott (1921-2019) spent winters with her second husband, Tom Clyde, in the 1950s. While on their honeymoon, they fell in love with the Caribbean and during their time there Abbott would frequent the markets, villages and wander the countryside. She often sketched during these outings and this work is likely a study or preliminary work for a larger unidentified canvas she would have finished in New York. Her work from this time period has a hallucinatory quality, which is attributed to her occasionally taking peyote while on her walks. In her work she captured her emotional response to the world around her, rearranging elements of the natural world in abstraction.