Sidney Goodman
American painter and printmaker, born 1936
Easter Sunday
1988
Pastel and charcoal on paper
96 x 60 inches (243.84 x 152.4 centimeters)
Purchase: The Reverend and Mrs. Van S. Merle-Smith, Jr. Endowment Fund, 1990.
1990.026.000

The Philadelphia artist Sidney Goodman came to prominence in the early 1960s with his realist, figural paintings. He often chooses allegorical themes and presents them on a large scale. Easter Sunday shows a person dressed in a bunny suit looming over a girl who ignores him while she plays with identically shaped and positioned toy bunnies. This larger-than-life size pastel drawing has been called "ominous" and "malevolent," but like much of Goodman's work, its meaning is deliberately ambiguous.