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Photo: Elizbeth Mann
Fish in the Moonlight
Photo: Elizbeth Mann

Fish in the Moonlight

Date1934
Maker Mark Tobey American, born Centerville, Wisconsin, 1890; died Basel, Switzerland, 1976
Label TextIn 1934 Tobey embarked on an extended tour of the Far East. In the course of his trip, he wrote poetry and recorded his observations, images which would come to shape his art. He noted particularly qualities of light: the moon over the Indian Ocean, the sun setting over Shanghai. In the splendid isolation of a Japanese monastery he was inspired by the devotions of his hosts to see the wholeness of the cosmos in light embracing all living things: Japanese vision which takes into account such [small] forms of life-gives them the dignity of a kakemono [a scroll painting]. . . An awareness of the smallest detail of her [nature's] vastness as though the whole were contained therein and that from a leaf, an insect, a universe appeared.
Object number78.11
Photo CreditPhoto: Elizbeth Mann
Published ReferencesBalken, Debra Bricker. Mark Tobey: Threading Light. New York: Skira Rizzoli in association with the Addison Gallery of American Art, 2017; p. 74, reproduced p. 75, pl. 30.
Credit LineGift of Captain John Bowen
Dimensions11 x 15 in. (27.94 x 38.1 cm)
MediumTempera on paper mounted on paperboard
Photo: Paul Macapia
Mark Tobey
1942
Object number: 62.78
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Mark Tobey
1947
Object number: 2009.52.110
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Mark Tobey
1941-1942
Object number: 2009.52.111
Photo: Paul Macapia
Mark Tobey
1944
Object number: 44.78
Photo: Scott Leen
Mark Tobey
ca. 1940
Object number: 83.165
Market Scene
Mark Tobey
1944
Object number: 79.145
Point Five - Vertical
Mark Tobey
1943
Object number: 43.100
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Mark Tobey
1944
Object number: 2013.4.2
Photo: Paul Macapia
Mark Tobey
1942
Object number: 43.33
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Morris Graves
1947
Object number: 2009.52.21
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Mark Tobey
1943
Object number: 73.9
Photo: Paul Macapia
Mark Tobey
1941
Object number: 42.28