Ginny with the Yellow Hat

Alice Neel’s evocative, subversive, and psychologically driven portraits have gained increasing recognition after her death. She brought a loquacious expressionism to each of her subjects—a diverse group of artists, intellectuals, and political leaders of the national Communist Party, as well as family and neighbors in Spanish Harlem. This portrait’s subject is the artist’s daughter-in-law, Ginny Neel, who was painted here at the age of twenty-seven. She sits nervously for the artist, her long, bony fingers and hunched shoulders embody a tense nervousness, and her cloche and winter coat imply that she was stopped on her way in. Neel had spent the previous winter in California with her son Hartley and Ginny, who were gifted the portrait upon its completion.