id:			85063
accession number:	2020.249
share license status:	Copyrighted
url:			https://clevelandart.org/art/2020.249
updated:		2023-08-23 17:50:56.154000

Bedford Series: Sides of a River III, 1981. Joan Mitchell (American, 1925–1992). Color lithograph; sheet: 108 x 82.5 cm (42 1/2 x 32 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift 2020.249 © Estate of Joan Mitchell

title:				Sides of a River III
title in original language:	
series:				Bedford Series
series in original language:	
creation date:			1981
creation date earliest:		1981
creation date latest:		1981
current location:		
creditline:			Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift
copyright:			© Estate of Joan Mitchell

---

culture:	America, 20th century
technique:	color lithograph
department:	Prints
collection:	PR - Lithograph
type:		Print
find spot:	
catalogue raisonne: 368:JM6

---

CREATORS

* Joan Mitchell (American, 1925–1992)  - artist

* Tyler Graphics Ltd.  - publisher

---

measurements: Sheet: 108 x 82.5 cm (42 1/2 x 32 1/2 in.)
state of the work:	
edition of the work: 	38/70

support materials:


inscriptions:

	inscription:	In pencil on recto, lower right: "38/70 Joan Mitchell (signed)"
	translation:	
	remark:		

	inscription:	Blindstamp lower right
	translation:	
	remark:		

---

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

	title:		Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection
	opening date:   2022-09-11T04:00:00
	<i>Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection</i>. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).

---

LEGACY EXHIBITIONS

---

PROVENANCE

	(Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY, sold to Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Cleveland, OH)
	date: ?-2011
	footnotes: 	
	citations: 	


	Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection, Cleveland, OH
	date: 2011-2020
	footnotes: 	
	citations: 	


	The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
	date: September 14, 2020
	footnotes: 	
	citations: 	


---

fun fact:
To make this print, Mitchell painted clear sheets of Mylar, which allowed her to layer colors for printing and retain a sense of immediacy.

digital description:
Abstract painter Joan Mitchell’s monumental lithographs convey her experience of the landscape and combine the complexity, intensity, and fluidity of abstracted lines that are fundamental to her work. In this lithograph, part of her <em>Bedford series</em>, 1981, heavily abstracted, dense bands of colorretain traces of the natural world, which can be seen as riverbanks. The expressive, gestural color marks are balanced by the white of the sheet, which also acts as the source of light or reflection off the water.

wall description:
With expressive marks of varying density, these prints suggest bodies of water that were important to Joan Mitchell’s life and work: the Seine River near her home in France and a small river that passed through Bedford, New York, the location of Tyler Graphics, the lithography shop where she made them. Mitchell described feeling a deep awareness for such bodies of water after spending her childhood near Lake Michigan in Chicago and later living by the East River in Brooklyn. The contrast between dynamic vertical and horizontal marks throughout the lithographic series suggests the constant movement and energy that made water such a continuous inspiration for the artist.
---

RELATED WORKS

---

CITATIONS

	Tyler, Kenneth E. Tyler Graphics: Catalogue Raisonné, 1974-1985. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1987.
	page number: 	368:JM6
	url:		

---

IMAGES