Hilary Harkness
Hilary Harkness
Answered Prayers, 2024
oil on linen mounted on panel
16 x 20 x 1 1/8 ins.
Henri Matisse’s painting Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat) (1905) has been part of SFMOMA’s story from the museum’s beginning. This portrait of the artist’s wife and muse, Amélie — considered scandalous by early twentieth-century art critics for its raucous colors and techniques that broke from painting tradition — was first exhibited at the museum in 1936, a year after its founding as the San Francisco Museum of Art, and it has been an icon within our holdings since entering the collection in 1991.
The rich storylines surrounding this masterwork — from its style and subject to its controversial public debut, journey to SFMOMA, and enduring impact on modern and contemporary art — encompass an impressive cast of artists, a famous family of collectors, and an incomparable arts philanthropist, who have each contributed to the history of this work. Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal, featuring over ninety works by more than forty artists from the early 1900s to today, tells the full story, which has never been told until now.
Hilary Harkness
Woman with the Hat, 2011
oil on paper mounted on panel
8 1/2 x 7 ins.
21.6 x 17.8 cm
Three paintings by Hilary Harkness use direct and indirect references to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, their legendary relationship, circle of associates, and the times in which they lived to comment on contemporary issues of sex and class. Answered Prayers (2024) is a dark take on a 1930s-era boudoir scene with a central female figure reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden age, a decapitated head of Ernest Hemingway (a protégé of Stein’s), and a depiction of Femme au chapeau in the background.
The abundant stories and works woven together in Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal offer a rich narrative, and even a touch of time travel, to both long-time admirers of the painting as well as those encountering it for the first time. Castro says, “I hope visitors leave this exhibition with an understanding of the fuller story of Femme au chapeau and why it’s a work that has been so resonant in its own time and also over time.”
Hilary Harkness (b. 1971) earned her BA from UC Berkeley and her MFA from Yale University. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain; American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; and Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; among others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA; Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, West Palm Beach, FL; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; and Seavest Collection, New York, NY; among others. In 2017, she received the Henry Clews Award and participated in the inaugural Master Residency Program at the Château de La Napoule, France. She has lectured widely at leading academic and cultural institutions. In 2014, she co-curated Roy Lichtenstein: Nudes and Interiors at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY. In 2023, Harkness’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Prisoners from the Front, was the largest presentation of her work to-date, and her first in over a decade. The exhibition was reviewed in The New York Times, BOMB, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. In 2024, Black Dog Press and P·P·O·W co-published Hilary Harkness: Everything for You, the first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s work, featuring texts by Lynne Tillman, Dr. Ashley Jackson, as well as an interview with American painter Ivy Haldeman.
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