[Painted Plaster Figure of Girl Reading]

Morton Bartlett

ca. 1950 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Between 1936 and 1965 Bartlett, a self-taught artist who owned an art-supply store and produced catalogues for the Scharff toy company, fashioned a group of eerily lifelike painted plaster sculptures of children in the basement of his Boston townhouse. Over the years, he photographed these figures in a variety of poses, dressed in garments he had designed and sewn himself, creating a secret archive of images that speak of love and loss, loneliness and obsession, with naive eloquence and sublimated pathos. The photographs, which were discovered along with the sculptures shortly after Bartlett’s death, are provocative and psychologically complex; like film stills from a private movie, they captivate the eye and tease the imagination.

Artist

Morton Bartlett

Date

ca. 1950

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of Marion Harris, 2000