Two swallows and a moth set against a stone house in the countryside. The birds and moth are painted to look like they are coming off the page.
Artwork Details
Medium
Acrylic on Canvas
Context
Lanyon created “dreamscapes” often combining flora and fauna motifs into fantastical and semiautobiographical compositions that reflect her private mythology. Her frequent depiction of everyday objects with simultaneously domestic and sinister connotations, has evoked comparisons between her work and “Metaphysical Painting” (i.e.: Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà) of the 1910s and 1920s.
Swallow is a dreamscape of Lanyon’s time in Yaddo where she was a fellow in the mid 1970s. She recalls that “one summer the view from my studio was the side of the so-called ‘pidgeon barn’ but all I saw was swallows—many of them – nesting in and out of the roof overhang, swooping as they fed on air. Their presence simply had to become part of the then current series that dealt with my environment with an eye to the global concern for saving our natural treasures from harm.”
Acquisition
Accession
2021.06-13
Source or Donor
Dick Hamilton, Jan Hamilton
Acquisition Method
Gift
Credit Line
Gift of Dick and Jan Hamilton
Made/Created
Artist
Lanyon, Ellen
Date made
1976
Lexicon
Nomenclature 4.0
Nomenclature Primary Object Term
Painting
Nomenclature Class
Art
Nomenclature Category
Category 08: Communication Objects
Getty AAT
Concept
birds (motifs), motifs, design elements (attributes), Nature, philosophical concepts
Hierarchy Name
Design Elements (hierarchy name), Associated Concepts (hierarchy name)