Figural
GEORGE TOOKER (1920–2011)
Tree, 1965
Egg tempera on gessoed panel, 20 x 20 in.
Signed (at lower right): Tooker
RECORDED: Thomas H. Garver, George Tooker (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc, 1985), pp. 102, 134 illus., 135 // Robert Cozzolino, Marshall N. Price, and M. Melissa Wolfe, George Tooker, exhib. cat. (London: Merrell Publishers, 2008) pp. 64, fig. 5 illus. in color, 65 //. Dana Gioia, “The Art of George Tooker,” Santa Clara Magazine (Summer 2016), p. 45
EXHIBITED: D. C. Moore Gallery, New York, June 9–August 5, 2011, George Tooker Memorial Exhibition: Reality Returns as Dream // D.C. Moore Gallery, New York, September 5–October 5, 2019, George Tooker: Contemplative Gaze: A Selection of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints
EX COLL.: the artist; Irma Rudin Fine Art New York, until 1982; private collection, Ontario, Canada, until 2006; to auction, Sotheby’s New York November 19, 2006; to private collection, New York, until the present
Tree, painted in 1965, reflects the contentment George Tooker found living in rural Vermont with his partner, artist William Christopher, and the hope the couple found for the future of America in the emergence of the American Civil Rights movement and the leadership of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Both men enjoyed regular income from teaching positions: Christopher at Dartmouth and Tooker part-time at the Art Students League in New York. As artists and citizens, the pair found reason for optimism in the American Civil Rights movement led by Dr. King. Tooker’s early work has been descried as “political,” an art of protest, visualizing the soul crushing effects of urban life on ordinary Americans. The faces and body language of Tooker’s people vividly convey anxiety, alienation, and helplessness. By 1965, Tooker had not given up his concern for the struggle of men and women to lead fulfilling lives, but he placed his figures in circumstances that offered some hope. In Tree, Adam and Eve are still in the Garden of Eden. The future, of which they have no knowledge, will be fraught. They are our ancestors and their lives will set the template for the stresses and challenges that all of us experience through life. The end, though, in the Christian version of the story, brings grace and redemption, a return to a heavenly abode.
