Isabel Norsten
Specialist, Head of Sale
Lot 109
JUDITH ROTHSCHILD(1921-1993)Winter Marsh
15 May 2025, 14:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$12,800 inc. premium
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Contemporary Art (US)
Rachel Griffith
Sale Coordinator
JUDITH ROTHSCHILD (1921-1993)
Winter Marsh
signed 'Rothschild' (lower left and on the reverse)
oil on canvas
24 1/8 x 30 in (61.3 x 76.2 cm)
Painted in 1964
signed 'Rothschild' (lower left and on the reverse)
oil on canvas
24 1/8 x 30 in (61.3 x 76.2 cm)
Painted in 1964
Footnotes
This work is registered with The Judith Rothschild Foundation, New York, under no. 64.14.
Provenance
Estate of the artist, New York.
The Judith Rothschild Foundation, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Born in New York City in 1921, Judith Rothschild became part of the vibrant Post-War Abstract movement that shaped the city's art scene in the 1940s and 1950s. She studied at Wellesley College, Cranbrook Academy, and the Art Students League, where she refined her craft under leading artists like Reginald Marsh and Hans Hofmann. In 1945, Rothschild exhibited her work for the first time as a founding member of the Jane Street Group, alongside artists such as Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Nell Blaine, at New York's first artist-run gallery.
Painted in 1964, Winter Marsh exemplifies Rothschild's distinct ability to merge abstraction with natural inspiration. Against a luminous field of soft whites and greys, bold strokes of black and vibrant flashes of green, blue, and ochre hint at the memory of a frozen landscape. A horizontal passage of color at the upper edge suggests distant marsh grasses caught under winter light, while scattered gestural marks evoke reeds breaking through snow and ice. Rothschild's fluid brushwork and confident palette create a dynamic tension between movement and stillness, offering a lyrical interpretation of nature transformed through abstraction.
Although Rothschild worked during a time when women artists faced significant barriers to recognition, she built a long and distinguished career and later became an advocate for underrepresented artists. Today, her paintings are held in more than fifty major museum collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
An elegant example of Rothschild's mature style, Winter Marsh captures the poetic sensibility that defines her place in the history of American abstraction
