This painting is an acknowledged masterpiece from the artist's most successful period of work. Having moved from Manhattan to eastern Long Island, Pollock returned in 1947 to drip and pour techniques that he may have learned ten years earlier from David Alfaro Siquieros. The resulting "allover" paintings, made from 1947 to 1950, constitute his greatest achievement.

Like almost all his New York colleagues, Pollock began his abstractions with drawings of figures, which were subsequently abstracted or obliterated. This canvas shows on its verso traces of drawing in black and yellow that are no longer visible on the surface, having been obscured by a layer of aluminum, gray, and olive-green paint enlivened with blue, pink, and yellow. Pollock finished the painting with new drawing in white and black, which he knitted to the middle layer by reintroducing some gray and white paint over the final layers of black.

The dominant critic of the day, Clement Greenberg, called such works "polyphonic." "Knit together of a multiplicity of identical or similar elements," he wrote, this art "repeats itself without strong variation from one end of the canvas to the other, and dispenses, apparently, with beginning, middle, and ending."

Signature: Signed and dated (lower right): Jackson Pollock 50

Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, on consignment from Pollock, 1950 - 1952; Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, 1953; Mr. and Mrs. Jay Z. Steinberg, Chicago, purchased from Janis, March 16, 1953 - gift of Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.

"Jackson Pollock," Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, November 28-December 16, 1950, no catalogue.

Ben Shahn, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Arts Club of Chicago, October 2-27, 1951, exh. cat., no. 38.

15 Americans, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, April 9-July 27, 1952, exh. cat. by Dorothy C. Miller, p. 46.

An American Choice: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 21-September 27, 1981, exh. cat. by William S. Lieberman, pp. 15, 63 (ill.), 156.

Jackson Pollock, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 28, 1998-February 2, 1999; Tate Gallery, London, March 11-June 6, 1999, exh. cat. by Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel, no. 177, pp. 275 (ill.), 325.

Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 18, 2007 - February 3, 2008, exh. cat. edited by Gary Tinterow, Lisa Mintz Messinger, and Nan Rosenthal, no. 32, pp. 4 (ill.), 5, 6 (ill.), 98-99, 100-101 (ill.), 102-103, 165 (essay by Pepe Karmel).

"American Fashion: The New Soft Look, Spring Ball Gowns," Vogue, March 1, 1951, p. 157 (ill.).

Frank O'Hara, Jackson Pollock (New York: George Braziller, 1959), p. 26 (ill. pl. 57).

Bryan Robertson, Jackson Pollock (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1960), pp. 19, 73 (ill. pl. 39), 96.

Eleanor Page, "She Lives in an Art Museum," Chicago Tribune, September 13, 1964, section 3, p. 3 (ill.).

Herbert Read, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Arts (New York: Meredith Press, 1966), p. 722 (ill.).

Francis V. O'Connor, Jackson Pollock (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1967), pp. 56, 61, 65.

Italo Tomassoni, Pollock (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968), p. 36 (ill., no. 60-61).

Alberto Busignani, Jackson Pollock (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1970), ill. pl. 34, p. 89 (no. 34).

Hans Namuth, L'Atelier de Jackson Pollock (Paris: Macula, 1978), Rosalind Krauss and Francis V. O'Connor, eds., p. 89 (ill.).

Monica Meenan, "The Vigorous Collectors," Town & Country, vol. 132, no. 4981 (September 1978), p. 148 (ill.).

Francis Valentine O'Connor, and Eugene Victor Thaw, eds., Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings, and Other Works (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978), vol. 2, no. 260, p. 82 (ill.); vol. 4, p. 254 (ill. pl. 58).

Teruo Fujieda, Jackson Pollock (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1979), ill. n.p.

Judith Goldman, "Collecting in Chicago: Love Affairs with Art," Artnews, vol. 78, no. 2, February 1979, p. 49.

Alice Hess, "Great Private Collections: A Chicago Visionary," Saturday Review, vol. 7, no. 14, October 1980, pp. 3, 72-75 (ill.).

Grace Glueck, "Met is Given a $12 Million Art Collection," New York Times, December 10, 1980, p. 21.

Anonymous, "Chicagoan Gives Art to N.Y. Museum," Chicago Sun-Times, December 11, 1980, p. 8.

Jerry Crimmins, "Her Art, and Heart, Now New York's," Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1980.

"Art: Muriel's $12 Million Sublimation," Time, vol. 116, no. 25, December 22, 1980, p. 69 (ill.).

Henry Hanson, "Upfront: East Coast woos Chicago collectors," Chicago Magazine, January 1981, p. 14 (ill.).

Hilton Kramer, "Modernist Show Moves Met Firmly into Art of 20th Century," New York Times, May 22, 1981, pp. C1, C21.

"Newman at the Met," Connaissance des Arts (U.S. edition), no. 17 (June 1981), p. 28 (ill.).

M. W. Newman, "Chicago," Franklin Mint Almanac, vol. 12, no. 4, July-August 1981, p. 20 (ill.).

Grace Glueck, "Is Chicago Losing Out in The Art War?," New York Times, August 2, 1981, section 2, p. 1.

Judith Goldman, "Collecting: Vicarious Pleasures of a Daring Painter-Turned-Collector," Vogue (New York), August 1981, p. 50 (ill.).

Diana Loercher-Pazicky, "The Newman Bequest," Connaissance des Arts (U.S. ed.), no. 19, August 1981, pp. 16-17 (ill.).

Also published in French edition of the above: Diana Loercher-Pazicky, "Une donation bienvenue," Connaissance des Arts, no. 354, August 1981, p. 21 (ill.).

Lisa M. Messinger, "The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection: A Promised Gift," Notable Acquisitions 1980 - 1981. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Fall 1981 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1981), p. 62 (ill.).

Grace Glueck, "Met acquires Early Pollock," New York Times, January 13, 1982, p. C19.

William Agee, "Muriel Kallis Newman: Life Among the Moders," Architectural Digest, December 1986, p. 70 (ill.).

Eugene Victor Thaw, "The Abstract Expressionists," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., vol. 44, no. 3, Winter 1986/87, pp. 39, 24-25 (fig. 18, ill. & dtl.).

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Jackson Pollock: An American Saga (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1989), p. 613.

Serge Guilbaut, ed., Reconstructing Modernism: Art in New York, Paris, and Montreal 1945-1964 (London, England, and Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 173, 174 (ill.).

Ingrid Anna Sepahpur, "The New Soft Look: Jackson Pollock in Vogue," M.A. thesis, Department of Art and Art History, University of Notre Dame, 1996, pp. 2, 41 (fig. 2).

James Coddington, "No Chaos Damn It," in Jackson Pollock: New Approaches, edited by Kirk Varnadoe and Pepe Karmel (New York: The Museum of Modern Art & Harry N. Abrams, 1999), pp. 110, 131 (pl. 19).

Victoria Newhouse, Art and the Power of Placement (New York: Monacelli Press, 2005), p. 170 (fig. 164).

"Recent Acquisitions: A Selection, 2005-2006," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., vol. 64, no. 2, fall 2006, pp. 60-61.

Carol Vogel, "Inside Art: A "Why Wait?" Exhibition," New York Times, February 9, 2007, p. E32 (ill.).