Chicagoan Gertrude Abercrombie painted deeply personal works, using objects, motifs, and references knowable only to herself and her social and artistic circle. The Past and the Present depicts a spare interior, whose somber tones are partially relieved by the bright blues and greens of the furniture covering, pillow, and lampshade. It is a vision of her first apartment in Hyde Park on the city’s South Side. Although the room is precisely rendered, as if painted from direct observation, Abercrombie no longer lived there. When she made this work, she was living in the Chicago rowhouse portrayed in the painting on the back wall. Abercrombie thus collapsed time, ruminating on her past and investing it with a vivid and strange realism.