Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984)
The Youth, 1982
Lithograph in colors on Arches paper
38 x 25 in
Gift of John Andrew MacMahon ’95
In this portrait, a young man sits directly in the middle of the painting. Sitting on an unpainted seat, the figure leans forward with his arms crossed over his legs and looks straight at the viewer. On the unpainted background, only the head and the arms are bathed in color. The figure in the painting wears a striped gray button down shirt and gray pants. The background is all canvas besides a patch of white to the right of the head, and most of the pants are only blue gestural outlines. There is an expressive use of color and line in the face and arms contrasting the unpainted background and gray clothing.
The Youth by Alice Neel is one of her hundreds of portraits painted over her long career. Living in New York for most of her live, Neel mostly painted her ever growing circle of friends that she met throughout her life. A MET article about her 2021 show says that, “New York was Neel’s greatest muse: She lived and worked in the city, whether it was the Bronx, Greenwich Village, Spanish Harlem, or the Upper West Side.”
Alice Neel’s portraits represent the people around her through sincere portraits that strike the eyes of viewers. The sharp contours and shadows of the face are created by Neel placing greens and blues over the red and yellow undertones of his skin. Neel’s use of contrast shows her focus on the face and ultimately, her focus on the humanity of her sitters. Neel often painted portraits of her close circle of friends and family. The sitter of this portrait is John Cheim, author and now the owner of a contemporary art gallery in New York City.
Alice Neel was born in Pennsylvania in 1900, and she attended the Fine Arts program at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, graduating in 1925. After marrying Cuban painter Carlos Enríquez, Neel experienced great hardship after the loss of one of her daughters and the estrangement of her other daughter. Neel experienced many other tumultuous relationships with men living in Spanish Harlem from 1938 to 1962, and also gave birth to two sons. Throughout her time living in Spanish Harlem, she continued painting distinctively striking portraits of her friends, local artists, or neighbors. Known for her honest depictions of people, Neel often painted subjects previously unseen in Western art, notably portraits of activists, pregnant women, and queer artists and performers. Painting figuratively with great honesty during the popularity of Abstract Expressionism in the United States, Neel only became recognized later in her career during the 1970s. Her popularity has grown to new heights in recent years. A retrospective of Neel’s work was hosted at the Whitney Museum of Art in 1974, and then again in 2000. In 2021, an Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition was shown of her work titled “People Come First.”
Brown Payne ’24