I have always known that Ruth Dicker would sometimes touch-up or repaint some of her works. I once heard of her borrowing one of our paintings and giving it back to us modified. In her slides, I found a few examples with subtle changes between different slides, but nothing as drastic as this example. I hadn't even noticed after looking at these pictures multiple times what happened. So starting with the newest version, here is Mountain Meadow from 1998:
Now the next picture looks extremely similar, and you might think the lighting and angle are different. But then you look at the yellow foreground leaves and you see that there are far fewer than that version above.
It was when I saw this picture that I started to put it all together. The three main trees have lost most of their branches and have been reduced to three simple shapes and the background is much shallower. There is no sky and the colors are very dark.
The final picture includes Ruth herself and a very minimal piece. A blank board with three tree shapes. The same three main trees as in all of these pieces. I don't think this was considered a work-in-progress at the time because I believe I have pictures of a show with this version. Another interesting thing to note is that this picture is older than 1998. The date listed on the painting changes with the modifications. Maybe the name changed as well, I will have to do more looking. If I had to guess, I would say this version is from around 1984 as I think it was made at around the same time as
Bays.
The Mountain Meadow
postcard is the first version above.
Update 1: The first version was called Three Oaks and was painted in 1983.
