Our January Treasure of the Swope!

Treasures of the Swope

Wild Flowers
c. 1940
Zoltan Sepeshy (1898 Kassa, Hungary – 1974 Royal Oak, Michigan)
Tempera on panel
25” x 32”
Museum purchase
1942.03
A plush orange pincushion sprouts needles and pins from its round silver base. The object sits atop a bleached wooden table, alongside other scattered paraphernalia of a milliner. The table’s corner juts into the lower right area of the painting with the soft insistence of a housecat bumping for affection, setting off a sequential action of levers originating at the hat decorator’s left elbow, moving along the length of her forearm, then engaging her articulated index finger, which, in turn, presses on a pearl headed hat pin that is poised, like a bubble at the center of the painting: its pinpoint is deftly propelled into the brim of a stylish wide-brimmed hat. The woman’s right hand is hidden from our view, but we intuit its spread-fingered aspect supporting the hat while artificial lily-of-the-valley and apple blossoms are attached with short, stabbing strokes.