Artwork
Carey's Backyard
Carey's Backyard is an oil painting by the American Impressionist artist Loren MacIver. It dates from 1939 and is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
About this work
Subject & Meaning
The composition centers on a wooden chair positioned near a garden wall, surrounded by verdant foliage and flowering plants that spill across the canvas.
Carey’s Backyard depicts an intimate domestic garden scene rendered in loose, luminous brushwork. The composition centers on a wooden chair positioned near a garden wall, surrounded by verdant foliage and flowering plants that spill across the canvas. The artist’s delicate handling of light and color transforms an ordinary backyard into a meditative space, evoking themes of quiet solitude and the ephemeral beauty of nature.
The chair, while functional, functions symbolically as a threshold between interior and exterior realms, suggesting both presence and absence. Through this restrained yet evocative imagery, the painting captures the interplay between human domesticity and organic growth, offering a contemplative vision of everyday life.
Technique & Style
Carey's Backyard is an oil painting executed on canvas by Loren MacIver in 1939. The work measures 91.4 centimeters in height and 61 centimeters in width. As a painting classified within the medium of oil paint, the piece depicts a garden scene featuring specific elements such as a chair, plants, and general garden foliage.
The formal composition relies on these depicted objects to establish the setting of the backyard environment. The physical support consists of canvas, which serves as the base for the oil paint application. The artwork is currently held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains cataloged as a painting created in the late 1930s.
History & Provenance
Carey's Backyard is an oil painting on canvas by Loren MacIver, dated 1939. The work entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it is currently held. No information regarding a specific commissioner, prior ownership chain, or detailed creation circumstances is documented in the available sources.
The painting measures 91.4 cm in height by 61 cm in width and depicts a chair, garden, and plant, consistent with its title's reference to a backyard setting.
Context
Loren MacIver's 1939 oil on canvas titled Carey's Backyard measures 91.4 by 61 cm and is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. The work depicts an outdoor garden scene with a chair, garden, and plants, reflecting the artist's attention to everyday subjects and intimate spaces. Its inclusion in a major museum highlights the place of MacIver's work within American modernism and provides a reference point for scholarship on her development.
Overview
Created in 1939 during the height of the Federal Art Project, Carey's Backyard is an oil painting by American modernist Loren MacIver. The work captures a domestic outdoor scene, centering on a blue and white striped chair surrounded by potted plants in the foreground. Behind these elements, a staircase with a railing ascends against a wall featuring a window.
MacIver employs her characteristic semi-abstract style, utilizing loose, rhythmic brushwork and a flattened perspective to merge the solid forms of the furniture and architecture with the organic movement of the foliage. Rather than strict realism, the composition emphasizes the interplay of light and shadow across the backyard space. This piece reflects MacIver's broader artistic focus on transforming ordinary, everyday subjects into poetic visual experiences through dynamic color and texture.
Painted during a pivotal year in her career, it demonstrates her ability to infuse mundane settings with a sense of vitality and structural complexity, distinguishing her contribution to 20th-century American modernism.
Artist & collection
Artist
Loren MacIver was an American painter and the first woman represented in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection.
