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Fair of Face, Full of Woe

Cecily Brown British
2008
Not on view
This small-scale triptych demonstrates Brown’s characteristic use of highly expressionistic and densely layered brushstrokes that tend to blur distinctions between the representational and the abstract. Initially the painting appears devoid of recognizable subject matter, yet closer inspection reveals hints of bodily fragments entangled among lushly rendered landscapes. There is a shared materiality between flesh and paint, which Brown suggestively exploits for both optic and erotic charge. Like the title, which references an English fortune-telling nursery rhyme, the painting exists in constant flux, its visual fate determined by each new viewer.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Fair of Face, Full of Woe
  • Artist: Cecily Brown (British, born London, 1969)
  • Date: 2008
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: each canvas: 17 1/8 × 12 5/8 × 1 5/16 in. (43.5 × 32.1 × 3.3 cm)
    three canvases: 17 1/8 in. × 38 in. × 1 5/16 in. (43.5 × 96.5 × 3.3 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian, 2009
  • Object Number: 2009.533a-c
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Cecily Brown
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

More Artwork

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Adoration of the Lobster, Cecily Brown British, Oil on UV-curable pigment on linen
Adoration of the Lobster
Cecily Brown
2023–24
Stroh Violin, George Evans & Co. English, Mahogany and aluminum, British
Stroh Violin
George Evans & Co.
first quarter 20th century
Margaretha van Haexbergen (1614–1676), Gerard ter Borch the Younger Dutch, Oil on canvas
Margaretha van Haexbergen (1614–1676)
Gerard ter Borch the Younger
ca. 1666–67
Untitled, Cecily Brown British, Etching with aquatint, drypoint, and softground etching
Untitled
Cecily Brown
Printer Two Palms Press
Publisher Two Palms Press
2003
Pitch Pipe, metal, British
Pitch Pipe
British
late 19th century (after 1862)

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