signed & dated lower right
Exhibited: The Muttart Public Art Gallery (Calgary), “Janet Mitchell Retrospective: a Celebration” (Touring Exhibition: August 28-October 14, 1995)
Provenance: Estate of Bill and Peggy Code, Calgary AB; Masters Gallery, Calgary AB (acquired from the personal collection of Janet Mitchell)
Note: This work appears in a full page illustration on page 51 of “Janet Mitchell: Life and Art”; Peggy Armstrong (Paulson); Hyperion Press Ltd.; 1990.
On pp. 45-46 of her book, the author comments on Mitchell’s experimentation and evolving imagery, stating:
“One remarkable feature of Mitchell’s early work is the periodic appearance of a painting that seems to be a foreshadowing of an idea that she explores more fully at a later stage. It is as if she stores and records visual ideas until she has reached a point in her development at which she is ready to use them….Clowns (1952) is quite a different kind of painting, but the mask-like faces seem to present a starting point for a number of paintings of figures that developed from the grass series.”
