American Art Collaborative

Starting in the early 1950s, Jane Freilicher pursued and honed a distinctive painterly style that incorporated identifiable subject matter even as it emphasized the artifice of the painted surface. Best known for the intimate views and still lifes painted in her studios in Greenwich Village and Water Mill, Long Island, Freilicher consistently showed herself willing “to sacrifice fidelity to the subject to the vitality of the image” so as to capture “a sensation of the quick, lively blur of reality as it is apprehended rather than analyzed.” Exploring the tension between sumptuousness and domestic utility, she created works that reveal “opulent beauty in a homespun environment.” Such luxuriance is evident in Still Life, Persian Carpet, a still life that is anything but still, which Freilicher imbues with vibrant energy, color, and rhythm. The brilliant patterns of the Persian carpet echo those in the painting in the background, and the flowers, spilling forth from their vase, possess a liveliness underscored by the quick brushstrokes that loosely demarcate their forms.