Red Roses Sonata

1972

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 921

Upon her 1960 retirement from teaching art, Thomas began to focus intently on her own work, producing a series of abstract paintings that explores the possibilities of pattern, brushwork, and color. In Red Roses Sonata, the interaction of repeated red strokes and an acidic turquoise underlying color produces a dazzling composition, a distillation of the painter’s study of nature and the effects of light and atmosphere outdoors. Like many abstract artists before her, she adopted a musical title to suggest an analogy between visual and aural experiences, between the formal elements of art and the keys or strings one might play to produce music. Thomas responded to the era’s social and political unrest by concentrating, in her own words, on "beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man."

Artwork Details

Overview

Provenance

Exhibition History

References

Title: Red Roses Sonata
Artist: Alma Thomas (American, Columbus, Georgia 1891–1978 Washington, D.C.)
Date: 1972
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 59 7/8 × 54 1/16 in. (152.1 × 137.3 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Gift of Longview Foundation Inc., in memory of Audrey Stern Hess, 1976
Object Number: 1976.94
Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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