Where summer ripens at all hours
Date2019
Artist
Angela Fraleigh
(American painter, born 1976)
MediumOil and acrylic on canvas
Dimensions96 × 144 in. (243.8 × 365.8 cm)
each panel: 96 × 72 in. (243.8 × 182.9 cm)
each panel: 96 × 72 in. (243.8 × 182.9 cm)
Credit LineCommissioned by the Delaware Art Museum, Acquisition Fund, 2020
Object number2020-1
On View
On viewCollections
ClassificationsPAINTING
Label TextThis painting, Where summer ripens at all hours, was commissioned by the Delaware Art Museum as part of the 2019 exhibition, Angela Fraleigh: Sound the Deep Waters. In this project, Fraleigh presents a contemporary look at gender and identity through the lens of historic narrative art. The artist explains that the construction of meaning—through image and text—is a critical topic in her work. Repeated stories and pervasive visuals dictate how women are perceived and how they navigate the world. Fraleigh dismantles those narratives in hopes of understanding the social-political complexities involved in their creation. In doing so, she provides a utopian space in which agency is restored to the female protagonist. Fraleigh mines the history of academic and avant-garde painting and the unique collections of public institutions for source imagery of women by female and male artists. For this painting, the artist drew from the Museum’s deep holdings of Pre-Raphaelite art and American illustration. Here she references Albert Moore's The Green Butterfly (c. 1879-1881), Frederick Sandys' May Margaret (1865-1866), and Simeon Solomon's Toilette of a Roman Lady (1869), all of which are on view in the Pre-Raphaelite galleries downstairs.
