Paintings Undone
Non-Finito Works in Art History and the Appeal of the Unfinished
When is a painting complete?
This question clearly haunts artists, as some will continue to work and rework the same piece over and over again. Some even attempt to make alterations after the work has been sold or collected, with English painter Francis Bacon being notorious for altering works during the course of an exhibition. Other artists never get the chance, and leave masterpieces behind, incomplete. These incomplete artworks are referred to by art historians as non-finito works.
On a recent trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I found one such painting:
The painting, by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Mrs. Richard Hoare Holding Her Child, stopped me in my tracks. The non-finito canvas and the subject matter seemed perfectly aligned. The mother was still a sketch, blurred around the edges as if viewed through the hazy gauze of memory. The child’s defining features had not yet been filled in, leaving them a puzzle. Is it a baby boy, a little girl? What kind of personality does the child have, what does the future have in store? In an era of high infant mortality rates, it made me pause to wonder if the painting had halted at the death of the child.
