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Artwork Description Resting Nude on Blue and Red* Patrick Ross Arnold’s Resting Nude on Blue and Red is a figurative oil painting organized around the tension between bodily mass, saturated color, and emotional restraint. The composition is horizontally structured, with the reclining figure extending across the canvas in a low, compressed pose. Her body creates a sweeping rhythm from the lowered head at the left, through the raised back and hip, and toward the bent legs at the right. This long, curved movement gives the work a strong internal architecture despite the apparent stillness of the scene. Color plays a central role in the painting’s impact. Arnold places the warm figure against bold passages of blue and red, using complementary temperature shifts to heighten the presence of the body. The red ground behind the torso adds warmth and intensity, while the blue cloth in the foreground and beneath the head introduces a cooling counterbalance. These areas of color are not merely background elements; they help shape the mood of the work. The blue suggests rest and shadow, while the red gives the composition a subtle undercurrent of heat and emotional charge. The body itself is handled with loose but deliberate modeling. Arnold uses ochre, umber, mauve, and soft violet shadows to build volume across the back, thigh, arm, and shoulder. The anatomy is not rendered with academic precision, but it remains convincing because of the artist’s attention to weight and compression. The lowered head, folded arms, and bent legs create a believable sense of physical rest. The figure presses into the fabric rather than floating above it. The face is largely obscured, which shifts the painting away from portraiture and toward a broader study of bodily presence. This choice gives the work a private, introspective quality. The viewer is not asked to meet the sitter’s gaze. Instead, the eye is drawn to posture, form, and atmosphere. Arnold’s nude becomes less about exposure and more about inwardness. The painting is also notable when considered within Arnold’s broader artistic path. His nude and figure paintings appear to be rarer examples of his representational practice, especially in contrast to the abstract-expressionist floral and nature scenes that became more closely associated with his later period before his passing. In that sense, Resting Nude on Blue and Red offers an important view into his range as an artist. It shows his ability to work from the body, to organize complex color relationships, and to create emotional depth through pose rather than narrative. Resting Nude on Blue and Red is successful as both a figure study and a color-driven composition. Its strength lies in Arnold’s ability to make the nude feel grounded, private, and painterly. The result is a work that feels intimate without becoming sentimental, expressive without losing structure, and significant as a rare figurative example within the larger arc of Arnold’s career. |
*The title of this work was assigned by Visard Gallery. |
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About the Artist Patrick Ross Arnold (1950 – 2021) Patrick Ross Arnold was a Philadelphia-area painter and educator whose work combined direct observation with expressive color and increasing degrees of abstraction. His long association with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts began at least by 1987, when he received the Academy’s William Emlen Cresson Memorial Travel Scholarship. He later returned to PAFA as an instructor, teaching painting and drawing before retiring. Although best documented as a landscape painter, Arnold’s broader body of work encompasses still lifes, interiors, figure studies, and increasingly abstracted interpretations of the natural world. Contemporary newspaper coverage reveals an artist who was actively involved in the cultural life of the greater Philadelphia region. In 1992, Arnold—then identified with Penn Valley—was included in the Main Line Center for the Arts’ second annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition. The following year, he served as one of four juror-exhibitors for the center’s Artists Choose Artists, an exhibition created to introduce the work of recent art-school graduates from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. His participation in the exhibition suggests that Arnold was regarded not only as a working artist but also as an experienced voice capable of recognizing and encouraging younger talent. Later in 1993, the University City Arts League presented a month-long solo exhibition of Arnold’s paintings, with the show appearing repeatedly in The Philadelphia Inquirer’s gallery calendar from late September through October. In 1994, his landscapes were included in Artists of Manayunk and East Falls at the Paley Design Center of the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science. In his review of that exhibition, Inquirer critic Edward J. Sozanski described Arnold as a landscape painter who combined an expressionist touch with a rich Post-Impressionist palette. Sozanski noted Arnold’s tendency to break a landscape into its component forms and reconstruct it through high-key color, particularly saturated blue-orange and yellow-purple relationships. This description offers a useful key to Arnold’s wider practice. Whether depicting a wooded landscape, domestic interior, floral arrangement, or human figure, he relied on broad planes of color to establish structure and atmosphere. His paintings remain grounded in recognizable experience, yet their simplified forms, heightened palettes, and visible handling of paint frequently push the image toward abstraction. A 2000 exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania’s Burrison Gallery featured Arnold’s drawings, landscapes, and still lifes, demonstrating that observational work remained central to his practice even as his visual language continued to evolve. Arnold’s place within Philadelphia’s artistic history is further affirmed by the Woodmere Art Museum, whose collection contains four of his works: Woods Around Wissahickon Creek, September, Peck, and Leverington Garden. These works reflect his sustained engagement with the landscape and neighborhoods surrounding Philadelphia, particularly the Wissahickon and Roxborough areas. His career was ultimately curtailed by frontotemporal degeneration, after which he retired from teaching and ceased painting. A 2013 profile documented more than 100 framed paintings and drawings and over 400 unframed works remaining from a lifetime of artistic production. Today, Arnold’s work stands as a distinctive contribution to Philadelphia regional painting—observational yet emotionally charged, deeply connected to place, and animated by an adventurous command of color. |
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Vintage Condition Disclaimer Special Condition Notes Minor stretcher wear. |
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Provenance* 1980s - 2021: Patrick Ross Arnold 2021 - 2026: Melissa Meyers 2026 - Present: Visard Gallery *Provenance and attribution details are based on our best research and are offered in good faith but are not guaranteed. Please contact us through the contact form with any questions prior to purchase. |
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Resting Nude on Blue and Red - Patrick Ross Arnold, c. 1980s
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Resting Nude on Blue and Red - Patrick Ross Arnold, c. 1980s
$950.00
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