WattsOS
PS
Prim Style
1976 · Chromogenic print
Image: 9 7/16 in. × 14 in. (24 × 35.6 cm)
Sheet: 10 15/16 in. × 14 in. (27.8 × 35.6 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Richard McLean
American, 1934
PaintingRealism
Representation
None documented
2
Institutional Exhibitions
2
Works in Collection
7
Assets Indexed
6
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
90%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Movements
- • Realism
Related Artists
No edges recorded
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
View all exhibitions →No image
A Museum Menagerie
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1975–1976
No image
Untitled I
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1971
About
Why this artist matters now
Richard McLean was an American painter known for photorealist depictions of horses and rural scenes rendered with meticulous technical precision. Working primarily in acrylic and oil throughout the postwar period, McLean developed a practice centered on the careful transcription of photographic source material into large-scale paintings that examine the relationship between mechanical reproduction and painterly craft. His work occupied a distinctive position within American photorealism, balancing documentary fidelity with subtle formal interventions that revealed the constructed nature of photographic vision itself.
Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 25d ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Realism
Medium
Painting
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (2)
Record
Images
Related artists
Adjacent in the graph
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Shared movement
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Shared movement
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Shared movement
Jean-François Millet
Shared movement
Hedda Sterne
Shared movement
Alina Szapocznikow
Shared movement
Lisa Yuskavage
Also painting
Robert Ryman
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Adolph Gottlieb
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Neo Rauch
Also painting
Richard Artschwager
Also painting
Record
Movements and affiliations
Institutional
Representation & Collections
In collection
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
In collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In collection
Museum of Modern Art
New York, US
Market
Auction sale history
Houses that have sold works by this artist at auction
Record