Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Rita and Hubert
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Rita and Hubert is both a portrait of leftist writer Hubert Satterfield and his girlfriend, Rita (whose last name, like her profession, has been lost to us), as well as a brilliant study in color, contrast, and pattern. Neel clearly took painterly delight in rendering Hubert’s plaid shirt and Rita’s ruffled petticoat, which dissolve into abstraction.
Satterfield is framed by books—the tools of his trade and symbols for the life of the mind. He leans forward assertively, as if to engage an invisible interlocutor in conversation. Rita, on the other hand, sinks into a blue sofa, directing her gaze at her partner, a mere accessory to his masculine authority. Neel might have underscored Rita’s secondary status deliberately, as a subtle but incisive critique of gender inequality.
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