African American Art
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Nigel Freeman
Vice President & Director, African American Art
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Early 20th Century & Harlem Renaissance
1
Grafton tyler brown (1841 - 1918)
Untitled (Sailboat on a Mountain Lake).
Oil on linen canvas, 1891. 305x457 mm; 12x18 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
This charming scene is an example of the early Western landscapes of Grafton Tyler Brown. Born in Harrisburg, PA to a family of freed slaves from Maryland, Brown's family moved to San Francisco in 1855. There Brown began working for the lithography firm of Kuchel & Dresel, specializing in drawing maps and bird's-eye views of cities and towns in Nevada and California. After the owners' death, Brown purchased the firm, renaming it G.T. Brown & Co., but he then sold the business in 1879 in order to devote his time to painting.
Brown moved to Victoria, BC, joining the Canadian government's geological survey of the Cascade Mountains in 1883. The following year he moved again, this time to Washington state, where he frequently painted Mt. Rainier. From 1886 to 1889, the artist had a studio and home in Portland, OR, where he was a member of the Portland Art Club. But by 1892, Brown was on the move again, relocating to St. Paul, MN, where he remained until his death in 1918. Today, his prized landscapes are found in institutional collections including the Smithsonian American Museum of Art and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC.
Provenance: private collection, Maryland, acquired at Clars Auction Gallery, April 17, 2016.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
2
Henry ossawa tanner (1859 - 1937)
Gate of Tangier.
Etching, circa 1910. 121x89 mm; 4¾x3½ inches, full margins. A posthumous printing.
A very good, dark impression, richly inked with dark edges.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; by descent, private collection, Paris; private collection.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
3
Henry ossawa tanner (1859 - 1937)
Mosque, Tangier.
Etching, circa 1912-14. 175x238 mm; 6 ⅞x9 ⅜ inches, full margins. A posthumous printing.
A very good, dark impression, richly inked with dark edges.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; by descent, private collection, Paris; private collection.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
4
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Mrs. Turner, Lenox, Mass.
Silver print, 1905. 178x140 mm; 7x5½ inches. Signed and numbered I and 70/75 in pencil on the mount. Printed and published by Richard Berson and Graphics International Ltd., Washington, DC in 1974. From Eighteen Photographs.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
5
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
The VanDerZee Men, Lenox, Mass.
Silver print, 1908. 160x127 mm; 6 ⅜x5 inches. Signed and numbered III and 70/75 in pencil on the mount. Printed and published by Richard Berson and Graphics International Ltd., Washington, DC in 1974. From Eighteen Photographs.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
6
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Marcus Garvey and Garvey Militia, Harlem.
Silver print 1924. 247x196 mm; 9¾x7¾ inches. Signed, numbered VII and 70/75 in pencil on the mount. From Eighteen Photographs.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
7
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Nude, Harlem.
Silver print, 1923. 241x191 mm; 9½x7½ inches. Numbered 82/250 in pencil, on the verso. Posthumous printing, with the estate’s blind stamp, lower right.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
8
James a. porter (1905 - 1970)
Untitled (Male Nude).
Charcoal on cream laid paper, 1925. 635x483 mm; 25x19 inches. Signed and dated "Oct. '25" in charcoal, lower right recto. With an unfinished figure drawing on the verso.
James A. Porter drew this academic figure study as an undergraduate student at Howard University. Porter entered Howard's School of Applied Sciences on an art scholarship in the fall of 1923, studied under the tutelage of James V. Herring, the founder of the university's new art department, and graduated in 1927.
Provenance: the artist; Dorothy Porter Walker; Constance Porter Uzelac; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
9
John harold devon robinson (1895 - 1970)
Untitled (Brooklyn Bridge).
Oil on linen canvas, 1925. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Initialed and dated in oil, lower right.
This canvas is a very scarce painting by John Harold Devon or J. H. D. Robinson, whom little is known about today, but was fairly active during the Harlem Renaissance in New York. He exhibited paintings in two significant exhibitions of the 1930s - Exhibition of the Work of Negro Artists, Harmon Foundation, New York in February of 1931, and Paintings and Sculpture by American Negro Artists,the Renaissance Society, the University of Chicago in December of 1936. According to a brief biography found in the Negro Statistical Bulletin of 1935, issued by the Department of Commerce, Robinson studied at the Brooklyn Art School, the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton, New York University and the College Art Association. The biography adds that he painted four canvases under the P.W.A.P, and also exhibited at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library and the Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York in 1934.
Provenance: private collection, Pennsylvania; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 4, 2018.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
10
Aaron douglas (1899 - 1979)
Head of Boy (Portrait of Langston Hughes).
Woodcut on cream laid paper, circa 1926. 120x102 mm; 4¾x4 inches, 1/4 to 3/4- inch margins. Signed, titled and dated “1957” in pencil, lower margin. A later printing by the artist at Fisk University.
This extremely scarce print is a striking representation of a hero of the Harlem Renaissance by Aaron Douglas, a small portrait of the poet Langston Hughes as a young man. Another impression, titled Portrait of Langston Hughes, an unsigned proof, printed in brown and gold metallic ink, is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum also has Portrait of Countee Cullen, another very similar Douglas woodcut. Both date from the same year as the artist’s The Emporer Jones series of woodcuts. The artist later revisited these blocks, in addition to making new etchings like Window Shopper and The Junkman, after taking a printmaking class in the summer of 1955 taught by Walter Rogalksi at the Brookyln Museum Art School. Earle p. 221.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
11
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1992)
Circus.
Linoleum cut on cream thin Japan paper, circa 1928. 203x235 mm; 8x9¼ inches, full margins.
A scarce example of early printmaking from the Harlem Renaissance era by James Lesesne Wells.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
12
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1992)
Untitled (Worship with Masks).
Brush and ink on thin cream wove paper, mounted to mat board, circa 1929. 191x127 mm; 7½x5 inches.
This illustration by Wells is from a series of drawings of African sculptural subjects. We have not been able to locate any publication.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
13
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1992)
Untitled (African Fetish).
Linoleum cut on tissue-thin Japan paper. circa 1929. 114x83 mm; 4½x3¼ wide margins.
This very scarce Harlem Renaissance print is a wonderful example of James Lesesne Wells’ block prints and his interest in the influence of African sculpture on modern art. Wells exhibited several simiilar prints in the Exhibition of the Work of Negro Arts at the Harmon Foundation in New York in 1931.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
14
Norman lewis (1917 - 1979)
Untitled (Bangwa Queen).
Color pastel on fine sandpaper, 1935. 508x355 mm; 22x15¼ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Norman Lewis drew this beautiful drawing after visiting the 1935 landmark exhibition African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. African Negro Art curated by James Johnson Sweeney, was intended to show modernism's roots in African Art. A photograph of the sculpture by Walker Evans, who was commissioned to document the large exhibition of over six hundred works, is included in the catalogue (fig. 319). The exhibiton had a profound effect on Lewis - he created a wonderful series of detailed and colorful pastel drawings of the sculptures he had seen.
This drawing is of an ancestral sculpture, a carved wood figure of a woman made by the Bangwa, a people indigenous to western Cameroon. Now best known as the Bangwa Queen, it is one of the most famous and important African sculptures. The sculpture was taken from the Bangwa by a German colonial agent before Germany had colonised the area. After being in the collection of the Museum für VölkerkundeIt in Berlin, it was sold privately to an art dealer in 1926 who then sold it to Helena Rubenstein in the 1930s who lent it to the MoMA exhibition. Collector Harry Franklin then acquired the sculpture from Rubenstein in 1966, and then his daughter sold the work for a record price at Sotheby's in 1990, where it was acquired by the Dapper Foundation in Paris. Man Ray took several photographs of the Bangwa Queen figure in 1934, including Surrealist images of it posed alongside a nude model.
The exhibition African Negro Art clearly resonated with Lewis and other African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance and were influenced by philosopher Alain Locke's exhortation to find artistic models in African art. In 1935, Lewis also joined the 306 group of writers and artists in Harlem who met in the studios of Henry Bannarn and Charles Alston, and was a founding member for the Harlem Artist Guild with Alston, Augusta Savage, Arthur Schomburg and Elba Lightfoot. The MoMA exhibition, which was on view from March 18 to May 19, attracted many artist visitors including Alston, Romare Bearden, and Gwendoline and Jacob Lawrence.
Other known examples of these extraordinary 1935 drawings include Baule Mask, Ivory Coast Baule Mask, Bobin (Boobin, Loom, Baule, Carved Bobbin (Guru) and Dan Mask, four of which were included in Procession, The Art of Norman Lewis, his 2015 retrospective curated by Ruth Fine, and Untitled (Head of a Mule, French Sudan), sold at Swann Galleries on December 10, 2020. Fine pp. 24-25, 248.
Provenance: private collection, Ohio.
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
15
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Untitled (Interior of a Harlem Brownstone).
Silver print, 1931. 203x254 mm; 8x10 inches. Signed and inscribed “NYC 1931” by VanDerZee in the negative.
This early photograph of fine decor in a Harlem parlor shows how VanDerZee documented the homes, in addition to portraits, of the rising middle class in Harlem in the early 1930s. An almost identical photograph of the same interior, Interior of a Home, from a slightly different angle, is in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
16
James a. porter (1905 - 1970)
Lynching.
Brush, pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1933-34. 292x260 mm; 11½x10¼ inches. Initialed in ink, lower right.
This drawing is related to a smaller ink drawing by James A. Porter that illustrated the poem Blasphemy - American Style in the December 1934 issue of the magazine Opportunity, p. 368.
Provenance: the artist; Dorothy Porter Walker; Constance Porter Uzelac; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection, with the estate's labels on the verso.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
17
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
Head of Man - Version II (Diego Rivera).
Crayon on thin, smooth wove paper, mounted to board, 1936. 305x254 mm; 12x10 inches. With the artist's estate signature ink stamp, lower right.
This fascinating portait of one of Charles White's heroes is one of the earliest known drawings by the artist to come to auction. Another, very similar version of this drawing of Diego Rivera was sold at Swann Galleries as lot 22 in African-American Fine Art auction on April 2, 2015, and is catalogued as D10 in Lucinda Gedeon's catalogue raisonné.
This early study was likely made just before or at the beginning of Charles White's study at the Art Institute of Chicago. White was determined to become an artist despite his family's tight finances, and early rejections from discriminatory art schools. White won a $240 scholarship to attend the Chicago Art Institute, entering in 1937. White completed the two year course in one year, despite often walking the 60 blocks home to save money and working as a cook and valet. Upon his graduation in 1938, he soon qualified to join the easel and mural divisions of the Federal Art Project in Illinois.
Diego Rivera's international fame and the rise of the Mexican muralists made a profound impact on Charles White and many other social realists' art work. In the mural divison of the FAP, White worked with muralists Mitchell Siporin and Edward Millman who both had assisted Rivera on murals in Mexico. Later in 1947, upon winning a Rosenwald scholarship to travel and study in Mexico, White met Diego Rivera and studied with David Alfaro Siqueiros at the Esmeralda Escuela del Arte and the Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico City. Curiously, despite a strong resemblance, an identification of Rivera was never made with this drawing.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection, New York; thence by descent to a private collection, California.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
18
Charles white (1918-1979)
Musician with Guitar.
Graphite and pencil on cream wove paper, circa 1937. 254x203 mm; 10x8 inches. With the artist's estate signature ink stamp, lower center edge.
This drawing is a page taken from one of the earliest sketch books of Charles White. White began his studies in the fall of 1937 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Unbound pages from the artist's sketchbooks were sold by Heritage Gallery in Los Angeles when it represented the artist's estate.
Provenance: estate of the artist: Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection, New York (1995).
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
19
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Two Barns.
Watercolor on cream wove paper, 1937. 450x570 mm; 17¾x22¼ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Illustrated: Ruth Fine. The Art of Norman Lewis, fig. 16, p. 31.
In her retrospective catalogue essay The Spiritual in the Material, Ruth Fine wrote that Two Barns was one of the earliest dated watercolors by Norman Lewis - "one of several in this medium of urban and country scenes completed during the late 1930/early 1940s." Fine p. 31.
Provenance: private collection, New Jersey; private collection, North Carolina, acquired at Swann Galleries, February 14, 2013.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
20
John wesley hardrick (1891 - 1968)
Untitled (Winter Landscape).
Oil on masonite board, 1937. 559x711 mm; 22x28 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
This winter river scene is an excellent example of the landscapes of John Wesley Hardrick. The Indianapolis artist spent his career in Indiana, painting lush landscapes, in addition to portraits and still lifes. Hardrick studied at the John Herron Art Institute until 1918, before fellow Indiana artists William Edouard Scott and Hale Woodruff enrolled. He later shared a studio with a young Woodruff in Indianapolis in 1924. Though Hardrick won the Harmon bronze (first place) medal in 1927, frequently exhibited at the Harmon Foundation, and was awarded a WPA mural commission, his work received little attention during his lifetime. Today, his paintings are in the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana State Museum and Hampton University.
Provenance: private collection, Louisiana.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Richmond Barthé in 1937
These three sculptures by Richmond Barthé (lots 21-23) display the work of an artist at the height of his career. Barthé was establishing himself as a leading American sculptor of the modern period with his new representation of the male figure – dynamic, muscular and black. His vision culminated in his mid-1930s series of African dancers, including the iconic Feral Benga. Barthé achieved new levels of naturalism in bronze as his passion for his subjects was perfectly matched with his superb technical skill. This was reinforced with the wide acclaim Barthé received for his figures, including African Boy Dancing, shown at the 1937 prestigious exhibition Dance International, 1900 – 1937 at the Rockefeller Center.
Carl Van Vechten, Richmond Barthé, September 23, 1939. Carl Van Vechten Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust. ©Van Vechten Trust.
21
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
African Boy Dancing.
Cast bronze with a dark brown patina, 1937. Approximately 413 mm; 16¼ inches high. Incised with the artist's signature in the base. Cast by the Cellini Bronze Works, New York, with their stamp at the base rear edge.
Illustrated: Parnassus, Volume 12, Issue 3, 1940, (cast illustrated in the "collection of the artist"); Sculpture by Richmond Barthé, Harmon Foundation brochure, reproduced in Samella Lewis, Barthé: His Life in Art p. 68.
African Boy Dancing is an important and strikingly beautiful bronze by Richmond Barthé - representing the culmination of Richmond Barthé's significant study of the male figure in sculpture, anatomy and African dance in the 1930s, and his pioneering realization of an ideal male nude.
African Boy Dancing shares many of its defining characteristics with Barthé's iconic 1935 Feral Benga. Appearing grander than its actual height, this natural and sensual representation of the male figure was made at the height of the artist's career. This lithe dancing figure is also part of Barthé's groundbreaking evocation of both male and homosexual sexuality in early 20th century American Art. The modelling emphasizes the dancer's lean physique, while the pose conveys a fluid, rhythmic movement. When seen in the round, Barthé's technical expertise and attention to the totality of the figure is evident. Both figures also share a very expressive modelling and finish for cast bronze - Barthé's 1930s bronzes wonderfully convey much of the immediacy of his clay model.
African Boy Dancing is an extremely rare bronze. In 1937, six of Barthé's African dancer bronze figures, including African Boy Dancing, were shown in the prestigious month-long exhibition Dance International, 1900 - 1937 at the Rockefeller Center, New York, In 1939, the Barnett-Aden Gallery of Washington, DC also exhibited a cast of African Boy Dancing at Oberlin College. Another later cast of African Boy Dancing was included in the Landau traveling exhibition Richmond Barthé curated by Samella Lewis. This is only the second time that an original cast of a 1930s figure has appeared at auction; an early cast of An African Dancer, 1934, was sold at Bonham's, San Francisco in 2005. Several of Richmond Barthé's mid-career bronzes were cast at the Cellini Bronze Works in Brooklyn, New York: including An African Dancer and the The Boxer, 1942, in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Art historian and Barthé scholar Margaret Vendryes has written extensively on Barthe’s attention to detail:
“At the height of his career, Barthé took great pains with the finish of his sculpture. Foundry work received vigilant scrutiny to ensure that the bronze was chased to a seamless finish and read true to its original clay model. The traces of pulled and smoothed clay created with fingers and tools animate figures like Feral Benga and act as a road map of Barthé’s meticulous rendering methods. This practice also reflected his admiration for the late 19th century French master Auguste Rodin who left impressions on surfaces that are his signature.”
Provenance: David W. Prall (1886 - 1940); thence by descent to a private collection, MA.
Prall was an influential philosopher of art with a PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. A Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1920-21 and 1930-1940; he also taught also at Cornell University, the University of Texas, Amherst College and the University of California. While at Harvard, Prall was a teacher and mentor to composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.
Estimate
$150,000 – $250,000
22
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Stevedore.
Cast bronze with a dark brown patina on a green marble base, 1937. 778x508x368 mm; 30⅝x20x14½ inches (not including marble base). Cast in 1986 under the supervision of the artist and the Richmond Barthé Trust. Incised with artist's signature, date, numbered 3/8 and incised "©", right base edge.
This iconic work by Richmond Barthé is an important and large bronze by the artist made at the peak of his career. Margaret Vendryes describes this sculpture of muscular dock worker standing on a i-beam in great length - he is both "Barthé's most virile male figure" and "a personal statement". With the epitome of a chiseled physique and commanding presence, the figure of a longshoreman was elevated to great heights by the artist. Barthé had created both a new type of masculine presence in his oeuvre, and a new depiction of a powerful black man.
Stevedore was a non-commissioned work made from the artist's own funds. Vendryes describes how Barthé kept it out of storage and with him when he moved. He later gifted his cast to the St. Ann's Parish Public Library in Jamaica. This later cast has a longer rope that extends above the hand. This is only the second time a cast of Stevedore has come to auction: another was sold at Swann Galleries on October 15, 2017. Another example of this 1985 casting is the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Vendryes pp. 92-96.
Provenance: private collection, Los Angeles.
Estimate
$75,000 – $100,000
23
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Head of a Dancer (Harald Kreutzberg).
Cast bronze, with a brown patina, mounted on a white marble base, 1937. Approximately 311 mm; 12¼ inches high (not including the base). A later casting, from an edition of 25. Signed, inscribed "xxx" and number stamped "25" along the upper edge, verso.
This contemplative but powerful head by Richmond Barthé is his well known portrait of the Czech-born German dancer Harald Kreutzberg (1902 - 1968). Kreutzberg is an important figure in German ballet and modern dance whom Richmond Barthé befriended when he performed in New York in the 1930s. Barthé made several sculptures of the expressive dancer in busts and figures. Barthé himself had studied Martha Graham dance techniques in an effort to more fully understand the movement and form of dancing figures.
A plaster cast of this head was exhibited and illustrated in the 1974 Anacostia Museum catalogue The Barnett-Aden Collection. A similar bronze casting, the same size as this head, is illustrated in the 1995 The Catalogue of the Barnett-Aden Collection and dated "circa 1973." Other bronze casts of this head are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, the David C. Driskell Collection, the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and the Kinsey Collection of African-American Art and History. Kinard p. 40; Auzenne, p. 42.
Provenance: private collection, Washington, DC; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 4, 2018.
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
Modernism
24
Norman lewis (1917 - 1979)
Untitled (Sheet of Studies).
Pen and ink and pencil on cream wove paper, circa 1940s. 508x660 mm; 20x26 inches (sheet). Inscribed "The truth is always vulgar! a mosaic of living things" in pencil, lower left.
This unusually large sheet of paper for sketching by Norman Lewis includes a variety of figurative studies and doodles. The sheet of paper has the printed Inkweed Arts illustrations on the verso, found on many Lewis works on paper through the 1950s.
Provenance: private collection, Louisiana.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
25
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled (Figure Study).
Pen and ink on thin buff wove paper, circa 1940s. 184x122 mm; 7¼x4⅞ inches.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
26
Norman lewis (1917 - 1979)
Untitled (Female Nude).
Pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1940s. 317x254 mm; 12½x10 inches (sheet).
Illustrated: Norman W. Lewis: Works on Paper, 1935 - 1979, Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, p. 67.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York; Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
27
Norman lewis (1917 - 1979)
Untitled (Female Nude).
Pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1940s. 317x254 mm; 12½x10 inches (sheet). Signed "Norman Lewis" posthumously by his widow Ouida Lewis.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York; Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
28
Joseph delaney (1904 - 1991)
Artist’s Studio Party.
Oil on linen canvas, 1940. 971x1216 mm; 38¼x47 ⅞ inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Exhibited: Invisible Americans, Black Artists of the ’30s, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 1968; Joseph Delaney: Retrospective Exhibition, Ewing Gallery of Art and Artchitecture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, June 6 - July 20, 1986, with the label on the frame back; Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney, Ewing Gallery of Art and Artchitecture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, September 10 - October 31, 2004; Higher Ground, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN, loan to permanent exhibition, 2019.
Illustrated: Sam Yates, Joseph Delaney: Retrospective Exhibition, p. 12; Federick C. Moffatt and Sam Yates, Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney, p. 53.
Artist’s Studio Party is the largest and most significant painting by Joseph Delaney to come to auction. This important painting is part of his expressive body of work recording the lives of New Yorkers. Joseph Delaney gives the viewer a fascinating view of the downtown artist's scene - painting in thin layers with a dark, somber palette.
Joseph Delaney became a long time resident of the West Village shortly after moving to New York to join his brother Beauford in 1930. Frederick Moffatt describes how Delaney lived in various garrets and lofts within a small area of the Village and Soho between 1931 and 1959. In 1940, Delaney lived on Sullivan Street, near West Third Street. Sam Yates wrote this painting was inspired by a party he gave friends earlier at 26 Bond Street.
In 1930, Joseph Delaney first studied at the Art Students League where he studied figure drawing with George Bridgman and human anatomy with Thomas Hart Benton. From 1934 to 1940, Delaney worked on various WPA projects in New York including the Index of Design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pier 72 mural, and with Norman Lewis on the Story of the Recorded Word mural at the New York Public Library. In 1942, Delaney eventually join the easel division just before the WPA was disbanded, and was also awarded a Julius Rosenwald travel fellowship of $1,200, which he used to work and travel down the Eastern coast, from Maine to South Carolina.
Artist’s Studio Party inclusion in the Studio Museum in Harlem exhibition Invisible Americans helped cement Joseph Delany's reputation as an important figure of the 1930s. In his Artforum review of February of 1969, Robert Pincus-Whitten hailed Joseph Delaney; "a single artist of tremendous merit was revealed to me in terms of a developed, tough, and by moments self-mocking Expressionism". Pincus-Whitten describes Village Studio Party as a "scene of group camaraderie an image of what must have seemed then to be the daring option of depicting a white girl dancing with a black man." In another studio painting, Artist's Party, circa 1942, Delaney includes himself seated at a poker game in an artist's apartment alongside a figure he later identified as Jackson Pollock. Both paintings are described in Frederick C. Moffatt's biography Life and Times of Joseph Delaney, 1904 - 1991 and are recognized for taking the viewer into the "sanctified" space of the artist's studio. Moffatt p. 167; Moffat/Yates p. 53; Pincus-Whitten p. 66; Yates p. 12.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Harvey D. Peyton, Charleston, WV; private collection, Illinois.
Estimate
$100,000 – $150,000
29
Claude clark (1915 - 2001)
Conversations.
Lithograph on buff wove paper, circa 1940-41. 228x304 mm; 9x12 inches, wide (full ?) margins. Signed in pencil, lower margin.
A very good, dark impression of this scarce lithograph - another impression is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent, private collection, Texas.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
30
Claude clark (1915 - 2001)
Drill Press.
Carbograph (carborundum etching) on cream wove paper, 1941. 241 mm; 9½ inches diameter (tondo), wide margins. Signed in ball point pen and ink, lower right. Published by the Pennsylvania Art Program, WPA, Philadelphia, 1941.
A very good, dark impression of this scarce WPA print - we have not found a record of another impression at auction.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent, private collection, Texas.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
31
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Comrades.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1943. 269x116 mm; 10 ⅝x4 ⅝ inches, wide margins. Signed, titled, dated "10-24-43", numbered 2/37 and inscribed "To my__A Swell Guy, Norman" in pencil, lower margin.
Illustrated: Ruth Fine. Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, fig. 13; p 137 (another impression).
A very good, dark impression of this scarce print; other impressions are in the collections of the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH and the North Carolina Central University Art Museum, Durham, NC.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
32
Allan rohan crite (1910 - 2007)
Et verbum caro factum est, et habitávit in nobis, et vídimus glóriam eius.
Pen and ink on cream illustration board, 1943. 254x216 mm; 10x8½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right recto. Signed, dedicated and inscribed with the artist's Boston address and a lengthy description of the scene in ink, verso.
Crite illustrated the Biblical story and church liturgy as a reflection of himself and his Boston community: black clergymen read the verse from the Bible before a black Mary and baby Jesus.
Provenance: the Evans-Tibbs collection, Washington, DC; private collection, New York (1992).
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
33
Margaret burroughs (1917 - 2010)
Untitled (Portait of a Young Woman).
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1945. 330x254 mm; 13x10 inches, wide margins. Signed “Margaret Taylor Goss” and dated “Sept ‘45” in pencil, lower margin.
Burroughs was known as Margaret Taylor Goss when she married the artist Bernard Goss, until they divorced and she married her second husband Charles Gordon Burroughs in 1949.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
34
James a. porter (1905 - 1970)
Child Reading.
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1945. 267x216 mm; 10½x8½ inches. Signed and titled in charcoal, verso.
Exhibited: James A. Porter: An Exhibition of Recent Paintings, Dupont Theatre Art Gallery, Washington, DC, May 24- July 4, 1949; James A. Porter: Artist and Art Historian; The Memory of The Legacy, Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 15, 1992 - February 9, 1993.
Provenance: the artist; Dorothy Porter Walker; Constance Porter Uzelac; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection, with the estate's labels on the verso.
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
35
Robert neal (1916 - 1987)
Untitled (Dock Scene).
Watercolor and gouache on cream wove paper, circa 1945-50. 343x381 mm; 13½x15 inches. Signed indistinctly in watercolor, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Colorado.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
36
Fred jones (1914 - 2004)
Untitled (Circus Performers with Horse).
Oil and gold metallic paint on masonite board, circa 1944. 305x406 mm; 12x16 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
The painting's wood frame was also painted by Fred Jones.
Provenance: Derrick Beard, Chicago; private collection, Illinois.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
37
Hayward oubre (1916 - 2006)
Entanglement.
Etching and aquatint, 1946. 184x149 mm; 7¼x5 ⅞ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed later by the artist, circa 1980.
Oubre studied etching with Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa while working on his MFA from 1946 to 1948.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
38
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Pensive.
Cast bronze, with a dark brown patina, mounted on a wooden base, 1946. 430x260x216 mm; 17x10½x8½ inches, not including the base. Proof, aside from the numbered edition of 10, cast beginning in 1967. Incised "E.C." and "46", lower right verso.
Illustrated: David Driskell Hidden Heritage; Afro-American Art, 1800 - 1950, fig. 56, p. 84; Lucinda Gedeon. Elizabeth Catlett Sculpture; A Fifty-Year Retrospective (another cast); Samella Lewis, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, p, 172 (another cast).
Exhibited: Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800 - 1950, traveling exhibition organized by the Art Museum Association of America, San Francisco, starting at the Bellevue Art Museum, Seattle, WA, and including the Mississippi Museum of Art, September 14, 1985 - January 10, 1988, with the exhibition labels on the base underside. Catlett lent this sculpture from her personal collection to the exhibition.
Pensive is a significant sculpture by Elizabeth Catlett, cast in bronze after one of her earliest figures. The original plaster Pensive followed the theme of the four terracotta figures exhibited in her 1946 first solo exhibition at the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC: Negro Woman, Tired, Cold and Frustration. Catlett importantly first represented modern Black women in her Negro Woman series - a narrative of identity, experience and representation. These figures show the physical nature and toll of their struggle. With her rolled up sleeves, crossed arms and leaning posture, Pensive is an expressive representation, sharing the modern simplified and angular features found in Catlett's Woman, 1942, oil on canvas, and Negro Woman, lithograph, 1945.
Catlett did not begin making bronze sculpture until the early 1960s. She made the mold and cast the first bronze of Pensive after the 1946 plaster figure in 1967. Samella Lewis recorded both the 1946 plaster and a 1978 cast in a list of Catlett's sculpture in her 1984 monograph The Art of Elizabeth Catlett. The final cast, 10/10, was made in 1995 for the Broad Art Museum (then the Kresge) at Michigan State University - their archives includes a letter written by Catlett describing the later casting in Mexico. The original plaster figure is visible in the 1980 photographs of Catlett's studio that illustrate Lewis's monograph. Casts of Pensive are in the collections of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, and the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Gedeon pp. 17-18, 43; Lewis pp. 33, 84, 172, 188-89.
Provenance: collection of the artist, Cuernavaca, Mexico; acquired directly from the artist at the Eleventh Annual Artists’ Salute to Black History Month, Los Angeles, February 6, 1993; private collection, California (1993); thence by descent to the current owner, California (2005).
Estimate
$50,000 – $75,000
39
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
John Brown.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1949. 380x260 mm; 15x10¼ inches, full margins. Edition of 30. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Charles" in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Robert Blackburn, Printmaking Workshop, New York.
An excellent, richly inked impression of this scarce print; other impressions can be found in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Hampton University Museum, Hampton, VA. Gedeon Ea9.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
40
Margaret burroughs (1917 - 2010)
Faces.
Linoleum cut on Japan paper, 1950. 355x280 mm; 14x11 inches, wide (full ?) margins. Signed, titled and numbered 1/10 in ink, lower margin.
A very good, dark impression of this very scarce linoleum cut.
Provenance: the Evan-Tibbs collection, Washington, DC; private collection, New York (1994).
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
41
Hartwell yeargans (1915 - 2005)
Untitled (Two Women).
Oil on linen canvas, 1953. 864x610 mm; 34x24 inches. Signed and dated "53" in oil, lower right.
An early, modern painting by artist Hartwell Yeargans who studied painting and drawing at the New York City's Art League under Morris Kantor from 1948 to 1951.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
42
Charles mcgee (1924 - 2021)
Untitled (Still Life).
Oil on masonite board, 1952. 610x406 mm; 24x16 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
This still life is one of the earliest paintings by this important Detroit artist to come to auction. Beginning in 1947, Charles McGee was attending art classes part time at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit (now the College for Creative Studies). In 1951, he studied oil painting with the director Sarkis Sarkisian and was a classmate of Hughie Lee-Smith. From this early, academic beginning, McGee's work evolved into the large, vibrant and multimedia constructions that he is known for today. His works are now in many museum collections, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Howard University and Clark Atlanta University. In 2009, Dr. Julia R. Myers curated the first major retrospective of his work with the exhibition and catalogue Energy, Charles McGee at Eighty-Five at Eastern Michigan University. The artist recently passed away on February 4th of this year. Myers pp. 6-7.
Provenance: private collection, Michigan.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
43
Aaron douglas (1899 - 1979)
Oak Bluffs (Vineyard Haven).
Etching and aquatint on cream wove paper, circa 1955. 114x191 mm; 4½x7½ inches, wide margins. Signed, titled, and numbered 11/15 in pencil, lower margin. Printed in 1975 by printmaker Stephanie Pogue, who signed and inscribed "Impression: Stephanie E. Pogue, 1975" in pencil, lower margin.
Alternative titles used by Aaron Douglas for this scarce etching include Vineyard Haven and Three Trees. After receiving a Carnegie Foundation grant, Douglas traveled and painted along the East Coast in the summer of 1951 - including a visit to Martha's Vineyard. Earle p. 220.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Postwar Art
44
Walter augustus simon (1916 - 1979)
Untitled (Study in Brown).
Casein on press board, circa 1955-60. 508x203 mm; 20x8 inches. Signed in casein, lower right.
Born in Brooklyn, Walter Augustus Simon studied art at Pratt Institute, the National Academy of Design and New York University in the 1930s. After army service during World War II and with help of the G.I. Bill, Simon re-entered NYU and earned a BS and MA in art history the late 1940s, and finally a PhD in 1961, with a dissertation on Henry Ossawa Tanner. The same year, Simon joined the diplomatic corps of USIA (the United States Information Agency) and managed to continue an artistic career while posted abroad in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Kabul and Cairo. Simon has exhibited his work in many museum and university galleries including the High Museum of Art, the Palais de Congress, Paris, and Spelman College Museum of Art. His art work is found today in the collections of Atlanta University, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, Cairo, Egypt and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New Jersey.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
45
Walter augustus simon (1916 - 1979)
Untitled (Study in Grey).
Casein on press board, circa 1955-60. 508x203 mm; 20x8 inches. Signed in casein, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New Jersey.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
46
Charles alston (1907 - 1977)
City at Night.
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1956-60. 914x1270 mm; 36x50 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed and inscribed in ink with both the artist's residential address, "555 Edgecombe Avenue, N.Y. 32 N.Y." and his studio address "Studio - 539 W. 152nd St." in ink, upper left verso, and titled in pencil and graphite (twice) verso.
Exhibited: Charles Alston, Artist and Teacher, Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, NY, May 13 - July 1, 1990, with remains of the gallery label on the frame back; Challenge of the Modern: African-American Artists, 1925-1945, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, January 23 - March 30, 2003, with the label on the frame back.
Illustrated: Lowery Stokes Sims. The Challenge of the Modern: African American Artists, 1925-1945, p. 67.
This striking urban abstraction by Charles Alston is an important painting, an outstanding and scarce example of a large modernist canvas. Alston's vision is rooted in his earlier urban nocturnes of the late 1940s, Harlem at Night, 1948 and Untitled (New York Cityscape), circa 1948. Both Alston and Norman Lewis shared a new vision of fragmented urban life against a dark, atmospheric ground. By 1950, Alston had transitioned completely into abstraction, and his Untitled, oil on canvas, 1950, entered in the national juried competition, America Painting Today, was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1951.
While it was dated 1948 in the Studio Museum exhibition, this large canvas, with its loaded and broad brushstrokes appears closer in date to 1960. His 1962 solo exhibition at Dunbarton Galleries in Boston featured Tenements, a very similar 40x50 inch oil painting, illustrated on the cover of the brochure. By 1960, Alston was painting and exhibiting compositions inspired by the urban environment seen from his Harlem at night for inspiration - including paintings like Across the River, 1959. His exhibition at Kenekeleba Gallery included other similar paintings like Nocturne (Across the Hudson River), 1964 and Tenements again, now titled Demolition and not dated. Jennings pp. 23 and 62.
Provenance: the artist, New York; Louise Logan, New York; Pierre M. Sutton, New York; private collection, New York.
Louise Logan, the sister of Dr. Myra Adele Logan was married to the artist Elmer Simms Campbell.
Estimate
$100,000 – $150,000
47
Charles alston (1907 - 1977)
Untitled (Head of a Girl).
Watercolor on cream wove paper, 1956. 254x330 mm; 10x13 inches. Signed in watercolor, and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Louisiana.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
48
Charles alston (1907 - 1977)
Untitled.
Sand and mixed media on masonite board, 1960. 444x600 mm; 17½x23½ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
49
Hayward oubre (1916 - 2006)
Portrait of a Bird.
Oil on canvas board, circa 1960. 457x356 mm; 18x14 inches. Signed, titled, inscribed "oil" and "Art Dept. Alabama State College, Montgomery, Ala" in ink on a label, verso
Hayward Oubre was an art instructor at Alabama State College from 1950-1965.
Provenance: the estate of the artist.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
50
Earl hooks (1927 - 2005)
Vessel.
Glazed stoneware, 1960. 330x88x114 mm; 13x3 ⅜x4½ inches. Incised signature on underside.
Earl Hooks was among the most significant Black ceramic artists of the 20th Century and the founder of Studio A, one of the country's first Black owned and operated fine arts galleries in Gary, Indiana. Born August 2, 1927 in Baltimore, Earl Hooks received a BA degree from Howard University in 1949, attended Catholic University in Washington, DC from 1949-51 and then received graduate certificates from both Rochester Institute of Technology in 1954 and the School of American Craftsman in New York in ceramics in 1955. He served as both professor and chair of the art department at Fisk University from 1961-67.
Hooks gained recognition for his use of monochromatic forms that maximized the inherent properties of his materials - creating his quiet and somber sculptural works.
Artist and art historian Amalia Amaki has described Hooks as “committed to portrayals related to the African American experience and creative techniques that emphasized his keen understanding of the relationships between balance, light, harmony and space.”
Provenance: private collection, Illinois.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
51
Earl hooks (1927 - 2005)
Study for Ceramic Sculpture.
Graphite on thin wove paper, 1963. 304x228 mm; 12x9 inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil on the mount, verso.
Provenance: the artist; private collection, Tennessee.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
52
Walter sanford (1912 - 1987)
Untitled (Modernist Figure).
Mixed media with canvas and fabric collage on board, circa 1960. 914x610 mm; 36x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New York; private collection, Alabama (2015).
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
53
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Untitled.
Mixed media and collage on thick cardstock, 1961. 267x349 mm; 10½x13¾ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Sweden.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
54
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Untitled.
Gouache, ink and collage on board, 1961. 440x620 mm; 17½x24½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
55
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Shinkichi Tajiri.
Gouache, watercolor, crayon, graphite and collage of various printed papers on cream wove paper, 1963. 508x774 mm; 20x30½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
56
Irene v. clark (1927 - 1984)
Untitled (Head of an African Man).
Oil on board, circa 1965. 254x203 mm; 10x8 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed and inscribed with the artist's address "743 Haight, San Francisco" in ink on the frame back.
Provenance: private collection, Nevada.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
57
Irene v. clark (1927 - 1984)
Untitled (African Huts).
Oil on cream wove paper, circa 1965. 203x254 mm; 8x10 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. With a label signed and inscribed with the artist's address "743 Haight, San Francisco" in ink on the frame back.
Provenance: private collection, Nevada.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
58
Robert neal (1916 - 1987)
Untitled (Winter Landscape).
Oil on masonite board, 1963. 406x508 mm; 16x20 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
This Robert Neal oil is a likely a landscape from the Ohio Valley, and shows the continued influence of Hale Woodruff on the artist in his postwar painting. Like Frederick Flemister and Albert Wells, Neal was both a student and follower of Woodruff.
Provenance: acquired from family descendants of the artist, Colorado; private collection, Colorado.