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Christopher Kiniaru

Prof. Barbara Koerble

ARTS 1301

13/7/2023

Art Piece analysis

The piece that i'm going to analyse today is called “Janurary” created by Helen Torr (1886-

1967). Born in Philidephia she was one of America's pioneering modernists. ‘Torr started her art career at

the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’(Amon Carter Museum plaque on her story) . She meets a

man by the name of Authur Dove and they get married in the 1920’s. As time went along though as she

continued with her career in art she started struggling getting people to support her. As a result of that and

barely getting any recognition she rarely exhibited her work. Dove eventually fell ill and so she sacrificed

her timie to paint to care for her spouse but every now and then she would create a piece or 2, she created

this oil on canvas piece in 1935. So I want you to imagine a house grey mixed with a brownish colour,

just a box with a triangle that is its roof with a lawn whose colour represents dead grass. If you were

looking at the house in front you're on its right side, with a fence behind the structure. Now imagine it’s

cold and grey outside, and the side of the house you are on there are 2 dead trees in front of you, cold

almost lifless with ‘twisted branches with a somber palette’ colour to them. And above the house the dead

leaves of the trees as if they are merging with the sky forming a canopy represents smoke and or clouds

that are barely visible with the silver-grey sky.

This piece was showing ‘Torr’s whimsical approach to portaiting nature’ she made several

pieces in the art style as the piece I’m analysing but they were not part of a series at all. This painting was

made when the couple mooved to Dove's hometown in Geneva, New York during winter. At the time

Torr and Dove were part of a community that was very artistic which surrounded the photographer and art

dealer Alfred Stieglitz, which included Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe. (Amon Carter Museum

plaque on her story) Her Husband got some attention while she started to feel regret when looking at her
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pieces. There's not much more context on this piece because one source says that she continued to paint as

she took care of Dove while another says that she painted her last piece in 1933 but the piece I'm

analysing was completed in 1935. But one thing is for sure she as time went along her motivation to paint

slowly dwindled away when this piece was finished.

What's my opinion on this painting? When I first layed my eyes on it, it drew me in and

produced an aura that felt cold and sad to the point where I started getting chills all over. I can’t lay my

finger on why it felt like that, but it does have hidden meaning to it. In my personal opinion see 2

meanings to this artwork. 1.) It represents Helen Torr's time of loneliness due to the loss of her spouce

and her motivation to paint is fading away like. The reason that I came up with this theory is because if

you look back on the description of this painting, the leaves of the dead tree slowly form into smoke or

clouds in the sky. This could represent her motivation floating away as the trees die which can represent

her husband. The other meaning is that it’s just a drawing showing her life in Dove's home town and she

is showing what it was like over there at that time in a very abstract way. Whatever the case may be, after

looking at her story her artwork has been overlooked and her life was full of joy in the beginning but

happiness slowly died off as time went on. This piece along with her other many pieces really show

‘Torr’s attentiveness to the energies and forms of our natural world. Using this as a recurring source of

inspiration for her source of signature elements of her paintings and drawings.’ (Amon Carter Museum

plaque on her story)

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Work Cited

Amon Carter Musuem of American Art: Arthur Dove: Miniature Labratories

3501 Camp Bowie Blvd, Fort Worth, Tx 76170

Christie’s: A site for auctioning art pieces and providing the stories for the artist

HELEN TORR (1886-1967) (christies.com)