The Future of the Falcon

Artist Gordon Onslow-Ford American, born Great Britain, 1912–2003

Date1947

MediumCasein and ink on paperboard

Dimensions24 x 38 3/16 in. (61 x 97 cm)
Frame: 27 1/8 x 41 in. (68.9 x 104.1 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineBequest of Fannie and Alan Leslie

Object number2006.21.15

On View

Not on view

Label Text
Gordon Onslow-Ford arrived in San Francisco in 1947 after a ten-year career in the Royal Navy and several years as an aspiring painter in Paris and Mexico. In Paris he embraced surrealism and its investigation of "inner worlds." He also concerned himself with artistic responses to Einstein's concept of space-time. The Future of the Falcon evokes what could only exist in dreams. Here space is bent and swirled, and within it floats a phantasmagoria of "personages," vaguely reminiscent of wriggling plankton or stellar phenomena, the impossibly tiny and the infinitely huge. If there is a subject to this painting, it may be the creation of Creation.ProvenanceJames Broughton [1913-1999, avant-garde filmmaker & poet], San Francisco, CA, by 1977; sold to David Cole [art dealer], Inverness, CA, late 1970s [per D. Carlson]; sold to David and Jeanne Carlson, Carmel, CA, by 1990; sold to Fannie and Alan Leslie, Palm Springs, CA, 1999; bequeathed to NCMA, 2006.Published ReferencesGordon Onslow-Ford: Retrospective Exhibition (exhibition catalogue) (Oakland: The Oakland Museum, 1977), cat. no. 40, illus. (b-w).

Pacific Dreams: Currents of Surrealism and Fantasy in California Art, 1934-1957 (exhibition catalogue), Susan Ehrlich, ed. (Los Angeles: UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, University of California, 1995), cat. no. 101, illus. (color) pl. 16.

John Coffey, "Modern American Paintings from the Bequest of Fannie and Alan Leslie," in Preview: The Magazine of the North Carolina Museum of Art (Winter 2008), briefly discussed 9, detail (color) 6-7.

Fariba Bogzaran, “From Landscape to Inscape–Egypt and Gordon Onslow Ford,” in Dada/Surrealism 19 (2013), discussed 15, comparative illus. 16.
Exhibition HistoryOakland, CA, The Oakland Museum, "Gordon Onslow-Ford: Retrospective Exhibition," March 22-May 29, 1977, no. 40 (lent by James Broughton), illus (b-w).

Oakland, CA, The Oakland Museum, "Pacific Dreams: Currents of Surrealism and Fantasy in California Art, 1934-1957," February 25-June 11, 1995; Los Angeles, CA, UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center (organizing institution), July 11-September 17, 1995; Logan, UT, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, no. 101 (Collection of David and Jeanne Carlson), illus. (color) pl. 16.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Modern American Paintings from the Bequest of Fannie and Alan Leslie,” November 25, 2007–September 6, 2009. Object Rights Statement

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