An Abstract Expressionist during the 1950s and 1960s, Philip Guston considered his paintings to be records of spontaneous gesture. In The Painter a dark, imposing form seems to imply both an easel and a figure in motion; the title suggests that this animated form represents the artist himself, involved in passionate, improvisational painting. The figure exemplifies the words of Harold Rosenberg, a critic contemporary with the Abstract Expressionists: “A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist. . . . The new painting has broken down every distinction between art and life.”