The Hidden Valley Painting

This thread traces the making, concealment, and public discovery of Rabo’s final monumental painting about the human wreckage left by war.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Blank Canvases

A White Beginning The Returned Panels The eight panels once used for “Windsor Blue Number Seventeen” return to Rabo after years entombed beneath the former GEFFCo building. Their blank, restored surfaces confront him with the failure that defined his reputation. A New Attempt Rather than discard them, he installs them in the potato barn and buys fresh materials. He calls the project an exorcism, though he cannot fully explain what it is meant to repair.

Six Months of Painting

A Valley in Paint The Work in Secret Rabo paints the entire long surface with minute figures gathered in a European valley at war’s end. He invents a history for each person, filling the composition with prisoners, soldiers, civilians, and survivors. A Changed Purpose The work does not resemble the abstract canvases that made him famous or infamous. It turns his remembered glimpse of liberation into an immense human scene, giving shape to lives that conventional victory narratives might overlook.

The Public Attraction

From Secret to Encounter Opening the Doors Rabo removes the spikes and opens the barn to visitors. The painting becomes a crowded public attraction, although he dismisses it as a World’s Fair or Disneyland rather than claiming the standing of a solemn masterpiece. Shared Interpretation Visitors invent or request stories about the figures, while Rabo gradually stops serving as their guide. The work’s reach no longer depends on his private explanations, and its moral force comes from many individual lives assembled together.

After Edith dies, shortly before Rabo’s final six months of painting

The six months after Edith’s death

After Circe sees the painting, near the novel’s ending