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The strong central axis created by the tree and the enclosed cactus share a compositional affinity with Stella’s best-known works, the paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge begun in 1918. In Tree, Cactus, Moon, however, the artist has turned away from his earlier homage to the machine and the materials of the Machine Age to more natural forms. The hard edges of the previous work remain, but broad, flat patches of natural matte hues have replaced the shine of steel and chrome.
Scholars have remarked on the painting’s dual sexual and religious imagery. The combination of the conical tree form and the spherical moon suggests sexual regeneration. At the same time, the moon’s radiating aura calls to mind religious forms such as the mandorla that encircles Christ in medieval and Renaissance paintings. [1] Both interpretations point to the spiritual rebirth and ecstatic renewal that Stella experienced upon his return to Italy after years in America. In spite of his fascination with the modern architecture and machines of his adopted country, Stella never felt at home in America, with its severe winters and cold urban environments. In 1929, he wrote to a friend, “Italy is a great joy and a great inspiration to me…. The beauty which smiles all around, here, in Italy, from innumerable masterpieces, spurns [sic] me to create a new Beauty equal in power to the old one.” [2]
Tree, Cactus, Moon was an early modernist addition to the Reynolda House Museum of American Art collection. In 1979, the painting was unveiled to the public in Reynolda’s Reception Hall, where works by nineteenth-century American artists Albert Bierstadt and George Inness also hung. At the unveiling, Barbara Babcock Millhouse, Reynolda’s founding director, remarked, “In recent years, Reynolda House has attempted to match its very fine collection of nineteenth-century works of art with equally fine works from the twentieth century.” [3] Like Georgia O’Keeffe’s Pool in the Woods, Lake George, 1922, a later gift to the Museum from Barbara Millhouse, Stella’s Tree, Cactus, Moon continues Reynolda House’s interest in landscape painting, but reinterprets the landscape using decidedly modernist visual language.
Notes:
[1] Charles C. Eldredge, Barbara Babcock Millhouse, and Robert G. Workman, American Originals: Selections from Reynolda House, Museum of American Art (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 114.
[2] Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994), 150.
[3] The Sentinel, Winston-Salem, NC, June 25, 1979, 8.
ProvenanceFrom 1946
Sergio Stella, bequeathed by artist. [1]
From c. 1965 to 1970
Edith Gregor Halpert (1899-1970), purchased from Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York. [2]
1973
Sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., New York, “Highly Important 19th and 20th Century American Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors, and Sculpture from the Estate of the Late Edith Gregor Halpert,” no. 62, March 14, 1973. [3]
1979
Betsy Main Babcock (1937-2001), New York, purchased from Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York on June 4, 1979. [4]
From 1979
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Betsy Main Babcock on July 5, 1979. [5]
Notes:
[1] Letter from Robert Schoelkopf, October 24, 1984, object file. Sergio Stella was the nephew of artist.
[2] Schoelkopf letter, 1984.
[3] Schoelkopf letter, 1984.
[4] Reynolda House coversheet, c.1981, object file.
[5] Deed of gift, object file.
Exhibition History1963
Joseph Stella exhibition
Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, NY (December 1963)
1967
42nd Anniversary Exhibition
Downtown Gallery, New York, NY (September 1967)
1968-1970
Downtown Gallery, New York, NY (8/1968, 9/1969, 11/1970)
1972
Edith Gregor Halpert Memorial Exhibition
National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (1972)
Cat. no. 28
1973
A Selection of American Paintings from the Estate of the Late Edith Gregor Halpert
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX (1973)
1990-1992
American Originals, Selections from Reynolda House Museum of American Art
The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
(OLF) 1994
Joseph Stella Retrospective
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (4/21/1994-9/18/1994)
2019-2020
Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY (October 18, 2019 - February 9, 2020)
2022-2023
Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature
Norton Museum of Art (10/1/2022 – 1/8/2023)
High Museum of Art (2/23/23 – 5/21/23)
Brandywine River Museum of Art (6/17/2023 – 9/24/2023)
Published ReferencesE .C. B. "The Consistent Inconsistency of Joseph Stella" Art News (December 1963): illus. 47, 62, 63.
Georgia O’Keeffe visions of the sublime.Ed. Joseph S. Czestochowski. Memphis: Torch Press and International Arts, 2004.
Millhouse, Barbara B. and Robert Workman. American Originals New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 114-5.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 164, 165
Shaykin, Rebecca. Edith Halpert: The Downtown Gallery and the Rise of American Art. New York: The Jewish Museum, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019: pg. 196.
Duncan, Michael. Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group. New York: Crocker Art Museum and DelMonico Books, 2021; pg 44.
DepartmentAmerican Art
Tree, Cactus, Moon
Artist
Joseph Stella
(1877 - 1946)
Datecirca 1928
Mediumgouache on paper
DimensionsFrame: 49 3/8 x 35 9/16 in. (125.4 x 90.3 cm)
Paper: 41 x 27 in. (104.1 x 68.6 cm)
Image: 40 5/8 x 26 1/2 in. (103.2 x 67.3 cm)
SignedJoseph Stella
Credit LineGift of Betsy Main Babcock
CopyrightPublic Domain
Object number1979.2.1
DescriptionJoseph Stella painted Tree, Cactus, Moon, circa 1928, during a long stay in his native Italy. Whether inspired by the dry and dusty landscape of his hometown Muro Lucano or by a period of time spent painting on the island of Capri, the painting conveys a sense of natural exoticism that sets it markedly apart from the Futurist cityscapes he had produced in New York. In this piece, a tall, conical cypress tree bisects the vertical canvas. A cactus with two spiky flowers blooms from an otherwise barren reddish-brown landscape. The tree both encloses the forms of the cactus completely and, like a spear, pierces the spherical moon behind it. The moon is encircled by bands of progressively thicker washes of gouache, from white to pale blue to a deeply saturated turquoise.The strong central axis created by the tree and the enclosed cactus share a compositional affinity with Stella’s best-known works, the paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge begun in 1918. In Tree, Cactus, Moon, however, the artist has turned away from his earlier homage to the machine and the materials of the Machine Age to more natural forms. The hard edges of the previous work remain, but broad, flat patches of natural matte hues have replaced the shine of steel and chrome.
Scholars have remarked on the painting’s dual sexual and religious imagery. The combination of the conical tree form and the spherical moon suggests sexual regeneration. At the same time, the moon’s radiating aura calls to mind religious forms such as the mandorla that encircles Christ in medieval and Renaissance paintings. [1] Both interpretations point to the spiritual rebirth and ecstatic renewal that Stella experienced upon his return to Italy after years in America. In spite of his fascination with the modern architecture and machines of his adopted country, Stella never felt at home in America, with its severe winters and cold urban environments. In 1929, he wrote to a friend, “Italy is a great joy and a great inspiration to me…. The beauty which smiles all around, here, in Italy, from innumerable masterpieces, spurns [sic] me to create a new Beauty equal in power to the old one.” [2]
Tree, Cactus, Moon was an early modernist addition to the Reynolda House Museum of American Art collection. In 1979, the painting was unveiled to the public in Reynolda’s Reception Hall, where works by nineteenth-century American artists Albert Bierstadt and George Inness also hung. At the unveiling, Barbara Babcock Millhouse, Reynolda’s founding director, remarked, “In recent years, Reynolda House has attempted to match its very fine collection of nineteenth-century works of art with equally fine works from the twentieth century.” [3] Like Georgia O’Keeffe’s Pool in the Woods, Lake George, 1922, a later gift to the Museum from Barbara Millhouse, Stella’s Tree, Cactus, Moon continues Reynolda House’s interest in landscape painting, but reinterprets the landscape using decidedly modernist visual language.
Notes:
[1] Charles C. Eldredge, Barbara Babcock Millhouse, and Robert G. Workman, American Originals: Selections from Reynolda House, Museum of American Art (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 114.
[2] Barbara Haskell, Joseph Stella (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994), 150.
[3] The Sentinel, Winston-Salem, NC, June 25, 1979, 8.
ProvenanceFrom 1946
Sergio Stella, bequeathed by artist. [1]
From c. 1965 to 1970
Edith Gregor Halpert (1899-1970), purchased from Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York. [2]
1973
Sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., New York, “Highly Important 19th and 20th Century American Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors, and Sculpture from the Estate of the Late Edith Gregor Halpert,” no. 62, March 14, 1973. [3]
1979
Betsy Main Babcock (1937-2001), New York, purchased from Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York on June 4, 1979. [4]
From 1979
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Betsy Main Babcock on July 5, 1979. [5]
Notes:
[1] Letter from Robert Schoelkopf, October 24, 1984, object file. Sergio Stella was the nephew of artist.
[2] Schoelkopf letter, 1984.
[3] Schoelkopf letter, 1984.
[4] Reynolda House coversheet, c.1981, object file.
[5] Deed of gift, object file.
Exhibition History1963
Joseph Stella exhibition
Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, NY (December 1963)
1967
42nd Anniversary Exhibition
Downtown Gallery, New York, NY (September 1967)
1968-1970
Downtown Gallery, New York, NY (8/1968, 9/1969, 11/1970)
1972
Edith Gregor Halpert Memorial Exhibition
National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (1972)
Cat. no. 28
1973
A Selection of American Paintings from the Estate of the Late Edith Gregor Halpert
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX (1973)
1990-1992
American Originals, Selections from Reynolda House Museum of American Art
The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
(OLF) 1994
Joseph Stella Retrospective
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (4/21/1994-9/18/1994)
2019-2020
Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY (October 18, 2019 - February 9, 2020)
2022-2023
Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature
Norton Museum of Art (10/1/2022 – 1/8/2023)
High Museum of Art (2/23/23 – 5/21/23)
Brandywine River Museum of Art (6/17/2023 – 9/24/2023)
Published ReferencesE .C. B. "The Consistent Inconsistency of Joseph Stella" Art News (December 1963): illus. 47, 62, 63.
Georgia O’Keeffe visions of the sublime.Ed. Joseph S. Czestochowski. Memphis: Torch Press and International Arts, 2004.
Millhouse, Barbara B. and Robert Workman. American Originals New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 114-5.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 164, 165
Shaykin, Rebecca. Edith Halpert: The Downtown Gallery and the Rise of American Art. New York: The Jewish Museum, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019: pg. 196.
Duncan, Michael. Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group. New York: Crocker Art Museum and DelMonico Books, 2021; pg 44.
Status
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