Virginia Berresford

A painting of flowers hung in the window at Dudensing Gallery on West 44th Street in New York and caught the eye of Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield, who dashed off to buy several paintings from the young artist, Virginia Berresford. “The work of Virginia Berresford,” Crowninshield observed, “is suffused with a spirit so warm, so personal and so full of sympathy that many of her canvases take on…the quality of strangeness and romance.” A rising talent by twenty-five, Berresford earned her first solo exhibition in 1927, held in Paris at the legendary Galleries Bernheim-Jeune, a pillar of the European avant-garde known for exhibiting titans of modernism such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Henri Matisse. Three years later, Berresford was selected to represent a strong emerging generation of modernists alongside Arshile Gorky and Isamu Noguchi in An Exhibition of Work of 46 painters & Sculptors under 35 years of age, the fifth exhibition organized by the newly established Museum of Modern Art in New York. Berresford based herself largely in New York, where she regularly attended the Metropolitan Opera and visited museum and gallery exhibitions. When not in New York, she summered in Martha’s Vineyard, wintered in Key West, and traveled often to Europe.

Virginia Berresford: Strangeness and Romance will present eight paintings from 1926 to 1947 that trace the creative development of an ambitious young woman, who sought out private study with Purism co-founder Amédée Ozenfant in Paris and forged her enigmatic style before opening her own gallery, where she championed herself and other artists. Her work describes her favorite places and deepest personal passions—Antibes, France, Martha’s Vineyard, the natural world, and music. Berresford gained critical recognition during her lifetime, and her work is held in important institutional collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Dallas Museum of Art; the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Massachusetts; the Detroit Museum of Art; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. It has been decades, however, since the artist has been the subject of a dedicated exhibition. Virginia Berresford: Strangeness and Romance will invite viewers to rediscover and engage with Berresford’s lasting contribution to twentieth-century American modernism.

Virginia Berresford (1902–1995) was an American modernist whose singular approach to painting emphasizes clarity and precision. Born in 1902 [1] in Rochelle Park, New York, Berresford was a deeply curious woman with a passion for reading, culture, world travel, and new experiences. She attended Horace Mann High School, and later studied at Wellesley College (1921–22) and Teachers’ College at Columbia University (1923–24). Determined to learn pioneering techniques directly from the European avant-garde, Berresford traveled to Paris in 1925. There, she arranged private lessons with Amédée Ozenfant, co-founder with Le Corbusier of Purism, which, in a reactionary evolution against the visual fragmentation of Cubism, assigned critical importance to the strength of individual forms and to the absence of unnecessary detail.

Berresford had many love affairs throughout her life and travels, including two marriages. While living in France, the artist met writer Benedict Thielen, whom she married in 1930. She later ended their marriage after falling violently in love with Morgan Worthy in 1947. Her marriage to Worthy was defined by his alcoholism and abuse, and she ultimately managed to extricate herself from the relationship a few years later. In 1954, Berresford opened her eponymous gallery in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard, where she showed her own work and organized exhibitions on behalf of other artists.

Throughout her career, Berresford earned important exhibitions. In 1927 at age twenty-five, she held her first solo exhibition in Paris at the influential Galleries Bernheim-Jeune, followed by her first New York exhibition at New Gallery in 1928. In 1930, she was included in MoMA’s An Exhibition of Work of 46 painters & Sculptors under 35 years of age, a groundbreaking group exhibition that heralded an emerging generation of talented modernists. Montross Gallery in New York organized exhibitions of her work in 1932, 1933, and 1934. Well into her career, in 1968, she exhibited at Jacques Seligmann Gallery in New York, a prominent gallery known for a robust program of European modernism responsible for one of the most famous sales in art history—Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) to MoMA. Berresford gained critical recognition during her lifetime, and her work is held in important institutional collections today including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Dallas Museum of Art; the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Massachusetts; the Detroit Museum of Art; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

[1] Sources conflict regarding the year Berresford was born (1902, 1904)

Virginia Berresford

Baroque Music, 1947

Painted in 1947, Baroque Music is an exuberant composition that celebrates Virginia Berresford’s passion for music. Two years before Baroque Music was executed, Berresford recalled an evening when a friend performed Bach’s widely known “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” in a church setting. In Baroque Music, the center of the composition is dominated by a group of baroque instruments, including trombones, a French horn, a harp, violas, a drum, and a large organ. Bells hang suspended throughout the scene, while arched pillars evoking stained glass windows fill the night sky with kaleidoscopic luminosity. The repetition of these visual forms mirrors the repeating, interweaving melodies of Bach’s Fugue.