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Marianne Moore and Her Mother

Marianne Moore and Her Mother
Usage Conditions Apply
Artist
Marguerite Thompson Zorach, 25 Sep 1887 - 27 Jun 1968
Sitter
Marianne Moore, 15 Nov 1887 - 5 Feb 1972
Mary Warner Moore, 1862 - 1947
Date
1925
Type
Painting
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Stretcher: 102.2 x 77.5 x 3.8cm (40 1/4 x 30 1/2 x 1 1/2")
Frame: 125.4 x 101 x 7.6cm (49 3/8 x 39 3/4 x 3")
Topic
Home Furnishings\Furniture\Seating\Chair
Mary Warner Moore: Female
Marianne Moore: Female
Marianne Moore: Literature\Writer\Poet
Marianne Moore: Journalism and Media\Editor
Marianne Moore: Education and Scholarship\Educator\Teacher
Marianne Moore: Education and Scholarship\Educator\Librarian
Marianne Moore: Pulitzer Prize
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Restrictions & Rights
Usage conditions apply
Copyright
© The Zorach Collection, LLC
Object number
NPG.87.217
Exhibition Label
Born Kirkwood, Missouri
Author of more than a dozen volumes of verse, Marianne Moore received virtually every major literary award—including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award—that the United States had to offer. Moore was acclaimed by her contemporaries, including T. S. Eliot, who cited the “original sensibility and alert intelligence” of her poetry. Using unconventional metrical schemes and focusing on such no-nonsense virtues as courage, loyalty, and patience, her innovative and exquisitely crafted verse secured her a leading position among modernist writers.
This portrait by Marguerite Zorach—Marianne Moore and Her Mother—redolent with the bright fauvist colors and faceted cubist planes that the artist picked up from four years in Paris, records Moore at an important moment in her rise to fame. Moore’s mother played a significant role in her work as an editor. Although the canvas bears a date of 1919, recent scholarship suggests that sittings likely took place in 1925.
Provenance
(Middendorf Gallery, Washington, D.C.); purchased 1987
Data Source
National Portrait Gallery
Exhibition
20th Century Americans: 1900-1930 (re-installation 2012)
On View
NPG, South Gallery 322