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Figure by Window

Paul Wonner’s 1962 Figure by Window is focused on just that: a solitary figure by a classic round bay window in a corner of a living room. But this nearly five-foot-high by four-foot-wide painting is made complex by blending different styles, often with thick, broad strokes of paint.

The scene is at once recognizable: A woman with red hair and pale skin sits on a sofa, her legs crossed. Her chin rests on her left hand, her left elbow set on a newspaper in her lap. Her back is turned to a fireplace on the left side of the canvas with a section of dark wall above it. A tall potted plant stands nearby, its top leaves reaching the height of the fireplace mantle. Wonner abstracts the image just enough to invite interpretation. Lacking any facial features, the figure is no one in particular. Similarly, the potted plant has some defined, ruffly leaves, and others that droop or are wide smudges of greens and blues with yellow highlights. It is unclear exactly how large her living room is, as only two panels of the bay window are captured on the canvas. These visible sections of window are painted white with gray accents. No discernable scenery shows through, indicating intensely bright sunlight washing out the view beyond. Her right side is in shadow, and her left is highlighted, perhaps by a third panel of window out of view on the canvas’s right.

Coming in closer further abstracts portions of the painting, and yet, better clarifies others. It becomes apparent that her blouse is dotted with the same orange as her hair and the same blue as her sofa and slacks. Or is the blue on her crossed legs actually shadows and not slacks at all? It feels like a clever trick.

Wonner delights the viewer by creating a scene where most everything is cut off and incomplete. The plant juts up from the lower border of the painting with no indication of the pot it stands in. Only a corner of the dark wall shows at the upper left. A sliver of ceiling peeks in along the canvas’s top border. And while the left sofa arm and the circle-patterned rug beneath the figure’s feet are cut off by the right and bottom edges of the canvas, the potted plant is what obscures the right sofa arm that she leans against, and a bit of her torso. Even as the artwork reaches almost five feet high, by cutting off the edges of the person and the objects, the canvas compresses her world into a tight and cozy space.