Abstract
There can be no single scientific “road to attribution” for works by all artists. The primary factors of an attribution are widely considered to be provenance, connoisseurship, and technical analysis, but they are necessarily given different weights for different artists. The processes and challenges surrounding the attribution of a painting by Yves Tanguy are examined in this chapter. These include his use of a limited palette, a World War II forgery ring targeting his work, provenance gaps resulting from World War II, the lack of a complete catalogue raisonné for his works, and his documented reluctance to discuss his artistic process. Some of the difficulties encountered here are useful for review because they are common for other interwar painters, and others are common to the surrealists. The condition issues associated with surrealist paintings and their resulting conservation histories are discussed here, to our knowledge, for the first time. They provide a major challenge not only to attribution questions but also for the overall preservation of the surrealist oeuvre. The extant information about Tanguy’s palette and working methods is provided, along with technical discoveries for the six paintings included in this study. This chapter also includes excerpts from interviews with two art historians, Charles Stuckey and Stephen Mack, who have worked intensively on a catalogue raisonné for Tanguy.
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Notes
- 1.
The role of X-radiographic data versus the connoisseurship expertise of Joseph Duveen for a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (La Belle Ferronnière) is one prominent early example of this debate (from a 1920 court case in which the painting’s owners sued Duveen for slander). This case is discussed in detail by John Brewer in several publications. See, for example, “Art and Science: A Da Vinci Detective Story”, Engineering & Science No. ½, 2005, 32–41. In scientific research we rely on the fact that the results we find are subject to re-evaluation and potential alteration as new evidence or better instrumentation is found. We have found that in fields outside of science, there is an expectation that a scientific result is immutable. Just as an attribution can change as a result of updated documentation or provenance data, it can also change as a result of new scientific data. This is analogous to the cumulative developments of the medical profession.
- 2.
Recent prominent examples include Noble et al.’s study of the Marten and Oopjen portraits, Gonzalez et al.’s identification of unusual lead compounds in Rembrandt’s white impasto and the comprehensive scientific examination underway for the Rijksmuseum’s 1642 Night Watch.
- 3.
See, for example, Phillippe Walter, “Chemical analysis and painted colours: the mystery of Leonardo’s sfumato”, European Review, 21(2), May 2013, 175–189.
- 4.
While Joan Miró was popular in the United States and his influence on, for example, Mark Rothko and Arshile Gorky well-recognized, Breton struggled and failed to build a successful intellectual movement in the United States. Rasmussen has noted “Capitalism had no problem accepting the irrational and unusual objects of Surrealism. If only the objects of Surrealism could be separated from their historical and social context…” and Drost et al. “It is important to emphasize that a clear distinction should be made between the reception of surrealism in the United States, on one hand, and the artistic and intellectual interests of the exiles...”
- 5.
Although their relationship would cool in later years, in part due to Breton’s dislike of Kay Sage and his perception of Tanguy’s relative bourgeois.
- 6.
For a background on this period and the influence of Kay Sage on Tanguy see for example Miller et al. 2011.
- 7.
Beyond the knowledge of which painting materials are anachronistic for his time.
- 8.
This was acknowledged by Sage at the time.
- 9.
This can be observed in Joan Miró’s Dos Bañistas (Deux Baigneuses), 1936 (Colección El Convent, Barcelona) where a green background in the work has altered to a pale brown color.
- 10.
As is invariably the case in this type of research, not all of the labels found could be associated with a specific collection, sale, or exhibition.
- 11.
As a boy in Locronon Tanguy watched the Breton painter Charles Toche (1851–1916), who worked in dark glasses to record objects in chiaroscuro (Maur 2001, p. 13). As a teenager in Paris, Tanguy is known to have visited the studio of Pierre’s father, the painter Henri Matisse (1869–1954) (Schalhorn 2001, p. 211).
- 12.
Original source cited in Davidson: Pierre Matisse to Gordon Washburn, 26 March 1940, The Pierre Matisse gallery Archives (note 7), box 80, file 14.
- 13.
The influence of artists such as de Chirico and other Surrealist painters on Tanguy’s selection of specific materials must be assumed, but the lack of comparative data on the materials and techniques of many of these artists precludes confirmation of any conclusive similarities between artists or individual works.
- 14.
Yves Tanguy, Les Profondeurs tacites (Unspoken Depths), 1928. Oil on canvas, 100.3 × 73 cm (39−1/2 × 28−3/4 in). Private Collection. For an image of the painting see, http://kaitentou.blogspot.com/2013/09/yves-tanguy-and-multiplication-ofarcs.html (accessed October 7, 2021).
- 15.
It must be noted that Onslow Ford published this description decades after the work was created by Tanguy, and he is describing a painting made ten years prior to meeting the artist in 1938.
- 16.
This photograph depicts Yves Tanguy at work on the painting Wine, Honey, and Oil, 1942 (Schalhorn 2011, p. 230). The original source of this photograph could not be confirmed.
- 17.
The use of graphite is inferred from the institutional media description and photographs and would need to be confirmed with physical examination.
- 18.
Tanguy began producing etchings in Stanley W. Hayter’s Paris studio in 1932. Except for a brief hiatus during his move to the United States (1939–42), where Hayter also transferred his Atelier 17 in 1942, he continued to make etchings for the rest of his career.
- 19.
Personal communication with Charles Stuckey December 2020 e-mail interview.
- 20.
This work has been known as The Storm since 1936 only, and may have originally been known by another name.
- 21.
The title of this painting may change in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné.
- 22.
Yves Tanguy, Les Nouveaux Nomades (The New Nomads), 1935, oil on canvas, 31 3/4 × 27 7/16 in. (80.6 × 69.7 cm). Ringling Museum of Art, Gift of the Estate of Kay Sage Tanguy, 1964, SN782. An infrared image (900–1700 nm) of the painting captured in 2019 elucidates this underlying figure as well as additional landscape features. https://emuseum.ringling.org/emuseum/objects/26090/les-nouveaux-nomades (accessed 3/25/2021)
- 23.
A dozen or so known paintings by Tanguy were created between 1931 and 1933. Future research may revise this number.
- 24.
Again it must be noted that Onslow Ford is making this observation about a work painted by Tanguy before the two artists met.
- 25.
This bright palette is especially evident in works such as Tanguy’s 1940 work La Lumiere (The Solitude): https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/yves-tanguy/light-loneliness/ (accessed 8 October 2021).
- 26.
- 27.
La Peur II (Fear II), 1949, oil on linen, 60 × 40 in. (152.4 × 101.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, 49.21; Multiplication of the Arcs, 1954. Oil on canvas, 40 × 60″ (101.6 × 152.4 cm). Museum of Modern Art, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund, 559.1954.
- 28.
Lefèbvre-Foinet was a partnership between Lucien Lefèbvre and Paul Foinet established ca. 1897–1904. Paul Foinet had been making oil paints since the 1880s following ‘a secret recipe,’ and prepared canvases and paint brushes that he sold directly to artists. Lucien Lefèbvre was Paul’s son-in-law who set up a storefront in the Montparnasse neighborhood. When Lucien Lefèbvre’s son Maurice took over in the 1950s, relationships with artists developed on a grand scale, and the company remained in the family until it closed in 1994.
See, for example, British Artists’ Suppliers 1650–1950. London: National Portrait Gallery; 2016. Paul Foinet; https://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers/f.php (accessed March 11, 2021)
- 29.
Lefèbvre-Foinet regularly made such credit arrangements with artists and amassed a large art collection (Melikian 2009).
- 30.
Noyer Indifferent, 1929. Oil on canvas, 92 × 73 cm. Private collection. The work referred to here as Title Unknown has previously been published with a different title: Fragile, 1936. Oil on board with canvas structure, 9.1 × 21 cm, Private collection.
- 31.
Tanguy’s paintings on canvas with published dimensions were derived from the 1963 raisonné and 1983 retrospective to give a non-comprehensive overview of Tanguy’s preferences for supports, and included data from approximately 244 works. Additional works were on alternate supports, were multi-part works such as screens, or were listed with no dimensions. Different conclusions may be drawn from further documentation of more paintings by Tanguy. Sizes may differ slightly if a work has been restored, including relining and stretching, which may enlarge the original dimensions.
- 32.
For a history and explanation of standardized European canvas sizes, see for example Callen 1982.
- 33.
These include Fear II, 1949, 60 × 40 in. (153 × 102 cm) and Multiplication of the arcs, 1954, 40 × 60 in. (102 × 153 cm).
- 34.
The composition of the powder used by Lefèbvre-Foinet is not specified. A number of nineteenth century sources describe the practice of sprinkling powder into the final layer of wet/tacky oil ground to absorb oil, improve the adhesive properties of the ground and subsequent paint layers, and protect a lead white ground layer from physical and chemical degradation (Stols-Witlox 2018, p. 121, 166). Excess powder on the ground surface would generally be removed before the priming was left to dry. Materials used include marble powder ((Kingston 1835, p. 35; Stols-Witlox 2018, p. 120), pumice powder (Hampel 1846, pp. 22–23; Stols-Witlox 2018, p. 120), flour (Hundertpfund 1847, pp. 127–129; Stols-Witlox 2018, p. 166), and zinc white pigment (or ‘filler’) (Church 1890; p. 26, Stols-Witlox 2018, p. 166).
- 35.
Phone conversation with Lefebvre-Foinet’s grandson, in reference to the supplier’s three-layer oil grounds.
- 36.
A lead white ground made up of a plumbonacrite-hydrocerussite combination was used by Lefebvre-Foinet and has been found in paintings by other artists who bought their supplies there, such as Pierre Soulages and Paul-Emile Borduas.
- 37.
The degree to which these potentially subtle physical and chemical differences are detected depends on the analytical technique(s) employed in each study.
- 38.
“Mark Golden said that his company had difficulty obtaining cobalt-based colorants during and immediately after World War II (Golden), which perhaps led to the substitution of ultramarine for cobalt blue and phthalocyanine blue (PB) for a cobalt stannate cerulean blue, the pigment found in the sample of Cerulean Blue Artist Oil Colors.” (Rogge and Epley 2017)
- 39.
The determination of iron oxide red versus red ochre (which contains clay minerals in addition to iron oxides) was by visual inspection.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to a number of individuals and institutions for sharing their research and perspectives and providing access to paintings in their collections. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Christopher McGlinchey and Abed Haddad from the Museum of Modern Art (New York) for allowing us to collect data on He Did What He Wanted, 1927, and Mama, Papa is Wounded, 1927. We thank Laura Fleischmann and the Albright Knox Art Gallery for allowing us to collect data on Indefinite Divisibility, 1942. We also thank the Galerie Hervé Odermatt for access to Fraude dans le jardin (unconfirmed title), 1930 and Robert Landau of Landau Fine Art for providing us access to Untitled, 1927 for scientific study. Satoko Tanimoto of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, LLC was essential to the X-ray fluorescence and X-radiography studies on Fraude dans le jardin.
The opportunities to examine paintings with Charles Stuckey and Stephen Mack were one of the most enjoyable aspects of this research, as were their many helpful discussions about their catalogue raisonné work. We are particularly grateful to them for their generosity with their time and expertise. We are also grateful to Alessandra Carnielli, Executive Director of the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, for hosting us at the Foundation during several points of this project, and for her valuable insights into the Foundation’s role in preserving Yves Tanguy’s legacy.
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Mass, J.L., Pollak, R., Shugar, A., Finnefrock, A.C., Centeno, S.A., Duvernois, I. (2022). Scientific Study, Condition Challenges, and Attribution Questions in Yves Tanguy’s Oeuvre. In: Colombini, M.P., Degano, I., Nevin, A. (eds) Analytical Chemistry for the Study of Paintings and the Detection of Forgeries. Cultural Heritage Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86865-9_2
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