WALT KUHN (1877-1949)

Curator John I.H. Baur reflected on Walt Kuhn’s complex depictions of performers, “There is no mistaking the artist’s intent, his interest in the tragic and human side of his character rather than its traditional glamour, and one is led to the conclusion that Kuhn’s art today springs from the same general current which produced the pallid harlots and dance hall queens of Toulouse-Lautrec over a quarter of a century ago.” (Walt Kuhn, Painter: His Life and Work, Columbus, Ohio, 1978, p. 104) Indeed, the present work Acrobat with Cigarette is a psychologically complex portrait of a performer offstage, suspended between two identities. Painted from model Albert Driscoll, who sat for other works by the artist including Clown with Black Wig (1930, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), the present work was shown among the artist's major pictures of the period. In contrast to many of these paintings including The White Clown (1929, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), which depicted performers donning costumes and makeup, the present work strips the sitter to his raw humanity and invites the viewer to contemplate his existence outside of life onstage. Paul Bird opines on Acrobat with Cigarette, "You've seen him in the subway, along Main Street, or at the corner pool parlor. He has no sense of responsibility...This one, particularly, takes life as he finds it." (Fifty Paintings by Walt Kuhn, New York, 1940, p. 13)