PRISCILLA ROBERTS
the present, from the Egyptian pharaoh head and Renaissance polychrome sculpture to the fluttering butterfly, alluding to and disrupting the unfolding of time. This painting, featured in the spring 2021 exhibition “Extra Ordinary: Magic, Mys- tery and Imagination in American Realism,” is an exciting new addition to the museum’s strong collection of American magic realists, including Paul Cadmus, Jared French and O. Louis Guglielmi. Only recently has Roberts’ singular style and formative role among the circle of American magic realists received proper attention and recognition.
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riscilla Roberts’ paintings are poetic meditations on the discarded past, which resist her era’s constant embrace of “the new.” She once described her painting style as “an anachronism in the present-day world,” inspired by the carefully staged interior views of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Roberts sometimes spent weeks or even months arranging objects for her compositions. Those objects includ- ed antiques store discoveries and family heirlooms, like the elaborate green dress in “Lay Figure,” designed in the late 1800s by the House of Worth. In this painting, the past meets
Jeffrey Richmond-Moll Curator of American art
Priscilla Roberts (American, 1916 – 2001), "Lay Figure," 1950. Oil on board, 30 x 25 inches. Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Museum purchase with funds provided by William Underwood Eiland Endowment for Acquisitions made possible by M. Smith Griffith. GMOA 2021.101.
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