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Artworks
Philip SurreyThe Argument, 19511910-1990Oil and tempera on board5 3/4 x 7 3/4 inThis painting is presently on view at our Toronto gallery
14.6 x 19.7 cm$ 18,000Further images
Inscriptions
signed and dated, 'Surrey 51' (recto, lower left)Provenance
Watson Art Galleries, Montreal, 1951.
Dominion Gallery, Montreal.
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal.
Dr. Norman Tepper, Montreal.
Kastel Gallery, Montreal.
Private Collection, Toronto.
Exhibitions
Montreal, Watson Art Galleries, Exhibition, November 1951, no. 13
Montreal, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Philip Surrey Retrospective Exhibition, September 2004, no. 63
— It is not uncommon that Philip Surrey’s paintings evoke the less endearing traits of his fellow man. In The Argument Surrey has chosen not to paint the fun filled baseball game, but instead an argument at the game. What was the argument? Perhaps it’s about the call that ended the game. Conspicuously absent are the baseball players. Are these the fathers of the players? Packing up the bats, the lone figure on the right one might reasonably speculate is a cameo of Philip Surrey, as is his custom, not engaging with other actors in his paintings. In a list of paintings he revised in 1986, for a proposed book Surrey refers to a painting, of 1952, Joueuses de baseball, notably the feminine. Are these then the fathers or spouses of the girls who had been playing? The Argument is a richly painted and highly desirable painting from this important generation of his work.
One of few additional references we have located to baseball players comes from his autobiographical notes (actually transcribed by his wife Margaret), documenting Philip’s painting process. “Sometimes I bring a half finished one downstairs and hang it, sometimes for weeks. Eventually I will see what needs to be done and take it back upstairs and do some more to it. ‘The Baseball Players’ hung over our dining room table for a year with all the players nude. Then I went up to my painting room and clothed them.”
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Margaret Surrey, Biographical notes of Philip Surrey, Philip and Margaret Day Fonds, P85A, National Archives of Canada, Estate Philip Surrey, p. 159B -
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