"Ahab" (SF62-030; SF61-956), c. 1960/62

The gouache "Ahab" by Sam Francis was created around 1960-62 in his studio in Arcueil in Paris, in connection with a group of other gouaches, studies and large-format oil paintings that refer to Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick", first published in 1851 . In 1957 and 1958 Francis painted the monumental canvases "Moby Dick", now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and "The Whiteness of the Whale", now in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. While the title of the latter work takes up the famous chapter of the same name in Melville's novel, which deals with the symbolism of colour, the present gouache "Ahab" is named after the one-legged captain of the "Pequod", whose manic hunt for the white whale is the main theme of the novel.