1 / 1

zoom is not available
image compare is not available
download is not available

A charcoal-gray, pointed, tower-like form wrapped with cords or vines rises to our left against a barren desert in this horizontal painting. Light falls from our left onto the sharply pointed tip of the tower. A deep, jagged shadow cast from a formation outside of our view to our left falls across the oatmeal-brown desert floor. Two rounded white forms, perhaps stones, lie near the lower right corner, and cast ink-black shadows on the ground. The horizon comes just over a third of the way up the composition. Along the horizon, two clusters of buildings and low hills are painted with tones of hazy indigo blue and tan. The sky above is ice blue, and a veil-like cloud stretches from the horizon to our left of center up into the right corner. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “Kay Sage 40.”

Kay Sage

A Finger on the Drum, 1940

East Building, Upper Level — Gallery 415-B

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 38.1 × 54.61 cm (15 × 21 1/2 in.)

framed: 45.72 × 62.23 × 3.81 cm (18 × 24 1/2 × 1 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (Gift of the estate of the artist)

Accession Number

2014.136.92

Artists / Makers

Kay Sage (painter) American, 1898 - 1963

Image Use

This image is unavailable for download.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .
Contact us about image usage .

Inscription

lower right: Kay Sage 40

Provenance

Collection of the artist [1898-1963], Woodbury, Connecticut; her estate; bequest 10 October 1963 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Corcoran Gallery of Art
Sage, Kay

Exhibition History

1941: Kay Sage: Paintings, San Francisco Museum of Art, 18 March - 6 April 1941.

1941: Kay Sage: Paintings, Tone Price Galleries, Los Angeles, 1941, no. 3.

1941: Kay Sage: Paintings, Tone Price Galleries, Los Angeles, 3-29 February 1941, no. 3.

1941: Kay Sage, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1941.

1979: Women Artists in Washington Collections, University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, 18 January - 25 February 1979, no. 66, repro.

1982: Solitude: Inner Visions in American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, 25 September - 30 December 1982, no. 32, repro.

Bibliography

1982: Miller, Stephen Robeson. "The Art of Kay Sage." M.A. Thesis, Boston University, 1982: no. 30, in the Stephen Robeson Miller research material on Kay Sage, 1898-1983; Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., microfilm reel no. 2888,

1997: Suther, Judith D. A House of Her Own: Kay Sage, Solitary Surrealist. Lincoln and London, 1997: repro.

2011: Cash, Sarah, ed. Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Washington, 2011: 325, repro.

2011: Miller, Stephen Robeson, and Jonathan Stuhlman. Double Solitaire: The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy. Katonah, New York, 2011: fig. 6.

2018: Miller, Stephen Robeson. Kay Sage, Catalogue Raisonné. Munich, London, and New York, 2018: no. P.1940.13, 132, repro. 133.