Herrera, Hayden. “The Artist’s Self Image: Self Portraits by Arshile Gorky.” In Arshile Gorky: Drawings to Paintings. Austin: The University of Texas at Austin, 1975. Exhibition catalogue, fig. 1, ill. in b/w, p. 44, as “Self-Portrait.”

Herrera 1976a

Herrera, Hayden. “Gorky’s Self Portraits: The Artist by Himself.” Art in America (New York) 64 (March–April 1976), fig. 1, ill. in b/w, p. 57, as “Self-Portrait.”

Karp 1982

Karp, Diane. “Arshile Gorky: The Language of Art.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1982, fig. 1, ill. in b/w, p. 169, as “Self Portrait.”

Jordan 1982a

Jordan, Jim M. “The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: New Discoveries, New Sources, and Chronology.” In The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, by Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater. New York and London: New York University Press, 1982, discussed p. 17, as “Self Portrait.”

Jordan 1982b

Jordan, Jim M. “Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings.” In The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, by Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater. New York and London: New York University Press, 1982, no. 1, ill. in b/w, pp. 125–26, as “Self Portrait.”

Herrera 2003

Herrera, Hayden. Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003, fig. 67, ill. in b/w, as “Self-Portrait.”

Notes

Reverse, on canvas board [not in artist’s hand]: Carrig-Rohane Shop / Columbus Ave. / between Berkley and Arlington

The reverse is covered by a backing board; the inscription information and marking are known from Jordan and Goldwater.

Commentary

The marking on the reverse, Carrig-Rohane Shop, refers to a well-known frame shop that was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the time that Gorky made this painting, he was taking evening classes at the New School of Design and Illustration (now the New School of Design), which was located on Boylston Street in Boston, not far from the framemakers’ store.

The painting’s first owner was Helen Austin (1904–2004), an artist who studied with Gorky at the Grand Central School of Art in New York for several years beginning in 1925. The only woman among a tight circle of friends in the class, she was affectionately known as “Sis.” After class Helen and her husband Nathaniel (1897–1975) would have dinner at Richard’s, a local restaurant off of Fourth Street, where Gorky frequently joined them.¹

1. Hayden Herrera, Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003), 145.

Related Work

The Ladislav Trakal Foundation

(Self-Portrait) 1923–24 P001

Commentary

Theme: Self-portrait

ladislav trakal

the ladislav trakal foundation