Object Details
- Luce Center Label
- Keith McDaniel was fascinated by the "sparse and unassuming" buildings on the wharf on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. He treated rooftops, windows, and walls as abstract shapes and painted them from unusual viewpoints. Here, the intersecting lines of the roofs dominate the composition, carrying the eye to the top left where an American flag flutters in the breeze. The delicate brushstrokes in the sky emphasize this sense of sweeping movement, so that the whole painting appears animated by the coastal winds.
- Luce Object Quote
- "The wharf buildings I chose as the subject derived a certain beauty from their utilitarian nature." McDaniel, Sara Roby Foundation Collection questionnaire, Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Data Source
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Artist
- Keith McDaniel, born Newark, NJ 1948-died 1986
- Date
- 1977
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation
- Medium
- acrylic on canvas
- Dimensions
- 32 x 48 1/8 in. (81.3 x 122.3 cm.)
- Type
- Painting
