In Piscatory, 1941, Abraham P. Hankins takes fish as the subject of a modernist composition, exploring the relationship between recognizable natural forms and abstraction. The title, meaning “of or relating to fishing,” establishes an aquatic association while leaving room for a broader interpretation.

Hankins’s artistic formation connected Philadelphia’s educational institutions with the traditions of European painting. Born in the Russian Empire, he immigrated to Philadelphia as a child and studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Académie Julian in Paris. His subsequent teaching at both PAFA and the Barnes Foundation positioned him within a community where the study of historical painting accompanied an engagement with modern art. This background offers a useful context for the present painting, whose abstracted natural subject reflects a concern with the expressive possibilities of representation.