Nightingale

Agnes Mills

Agnes Mills’ career began with her position as one of the youngest instructors for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, beginning to teach theater set design and mural painting at the age of eighteen. This led to commissions by dance troupes to sketch and otherwise capture their performances, and eventually Mills’ own work in oil painting, drawing, and printmaking primarily centered around dance and theater.

In “Nightingale” a woman stands in a courtyard surrounded by birds and animals. The scene appears to be posed, similar in style to Greek folk art, with a sculptural, robed figure in the center and the fauna arranged around her. Her use of color viscosity intaglio creates a dimensionality akin to frescoes and illuminates Mills’ history as a sculptor and muralist.