Video: FLW Usonian armchair at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art - Kansas City, MO

[DavidC]

Given that the museum is in Kansas City, could this be a chair from Sondern?

Usonian armchair - 1940


David

[Roderick Grant]

Right after the FLW chair is a portrait, "Frankie, the Organ Boy," by George Wesley Bellows. Somewhere, long ago, on a planet far, far away, I read that the portrait of Anna Lloyd Wright, which hung over the Taliesin studio fireplace, was painted by Bellows. Does anyone know if there is any substantiation for that claim? Could Frankie, the Organ Boy be a young FLW? He did, after all, pump the bellows while his father played. But no, the painting is dated 1907, when FLW was 40

[SDR]

A catalog raisonné of Wright furniture has yet to be undertaken---unless a busy bee at some institution has begun the work. In the meantime we resort to a scattered array of sources, including Taliesin drawings of course. Here is what is found in that category, at Artstor:

https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/285 ... 2108047259

https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/285 ... 2108047259

Detail of sheet 4014.007

It is unusual for a modest early Usonian---or any Wright house, come to think of it---to have three drawing sheets showing chair designs. Naturally, none of the three contains the same designs, but all are variations of some of the most ubiquitous of Wright's plywood Usonian-era chairs. The oddest of them, the armchair, is even more elaborate on paper than what was built, as can be seen by comparing the images in the video with the second-linked drawing above.

S