African American Art
Officers
Nigel Freeman
Vice President & Director, African American Art
nfreeman@swanngalleries.com
212 254 4710 ext. 33
Shanell Kitt
Administrator
skitt@swanngalleries.com
(212) 254-4710 ext. 56
George S. Lowry
Chairman
Nicholas D. Lowry
President, Principal Auctioneer
924899
Andrew M. Ansorge
Vice President & Controller
Alexandra Mann-Nelson
Chief Marketing Officer
2030704
Todd Weyman
Vice President & Director, Prints & Drawings
1214107
Nigel Freeman
Vice President & Director, African American Art
Rick Stattler
Vice President & Director, Books & Manuscripts
Administration
Andrew M. Ansorge
Vice President & Controller
aansorge@swanngalleries.com
Ariel Kim
Client Accounting
akim@swanngalleries.com
Diana Gibaldi
Operations Manager
diana@swanngalleries.com
Kelsie Jankowski
Communications Manager
kjankowski@swanngalleries.com
Harlem Renaissance / Modern
Henry ossawa tanner (1859 - 1937)
Head of a Sheep.
Oil on canvas, mounted on board, circa 1880-81. Approximately 267x254 mm; 10½x10 inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto. With a cropped oil study of a nude on the verso of the board.
Provenance: the estate of the artist, with estate blue ink stamp and the ink signature of Jesse O. Tanner, on the frame back; Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, with the label on the frame back; the artist Harry Andrew Jackson; thence by descent, private collection, Wyoming.
Henry Ossawa Tanner painted Head of a Sheep early in his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts when he cultivated the speciality of painting animals. With the support of his parents and inspiration from the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition, Tanner enrolled at the Academy in December of 1879. A year later, he began life drawing classes under the tutelage of Thomas Eakins. After an interest in maritime painting, Tanner settled on painting animal subjects, with his stated desire “to become an American Landseer.” According to Anna O. Marley, “Tanner was so devoted to animal painting that he bought a sheep to serve as a model for his pastoral compositions.” This small study has clear ties in subject to Tanner’s 1881 Boy and Sheep Under a Tree, but its bold passages of painterly brushwork are closer to his naturalist study of lions, Pomp at the Zoo, circa 1880, and Lion Licking its Paw, 1886. Marley p. 19; Mosby pp. 74-75.
Henry ossawa tanner (1859 - 1937)
The Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water.
Etching on cream wove paper, circa 1905-15. 184x244 mm; 7¼x9⅝ inches, full margins. Signed by the artist’s son, Jesse O. Tanner, and numbered 105/120 in ink, verso. With the artist’s estate ink stamp, verso.
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.
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Native American Couple.
Silver print, 1907. 120x88 mm; 4¾x3½ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, verso.
This scarce and early Vanderzee photograph shows a male and female duo dressed in Indigenous American regalia. Another example of this photograph is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
William a. harper (1873 - 1910)
Untitled (French Landscape).
Oil on canvas, mounted on board, circa 1907-08. 330x406 mm; 13x16 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: the Decatur Art Center; Millikan University, Decatur (1969); private collection, Illinois (2020).
William A. Harper painted this beautiful, pastoral landscape on the outskirts of Paris during his second French trip. Like fellow landscape painters Edward M. Bannister and James Bolivar Needham, Harper was born in Canada; his family moved from Ontario to Illinois in 1885. Harper attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1895 - 1901, working as a nightwatch man and janitor to pay for his tuition. Graduating with honors, he then studied in Paris from 1903 - 1905 at the Académie Julian following in Henry Ossawa Tanner's footsteps, and was greatly influenced by the Barbizon School. In 1905, Harper earned the Municipal Art League's blue ribbon at the Art Institute of Chicago for nine of his paintings. On a return trip to France from 1907-08, Harper studied informally with Tanner and his paintings became more Impressionist. Harper's career was cut short when he died of tuberculosis only a few years later at the age of 36. The Art Institute held a memorial exhibition in Harper's honor, showcasing 60 of his works. Today, his paintings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery (The Evans-Tibbs Collection), the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution, the Columbus Museum of Art, the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, the Flint Institute of Fine Arts, Tuskegee University, the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Foundation for the Arts and the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art. Barnwell p. 157; Kennedy p. 119.
Laura wheeler waring (1887 - 1948)
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France.
Oil on board, circa 1925. 165x215 mm; 6½x8½ inches. Signed, titled, and inscribed with the artist’s studio address “756 N. 43rd St., Philadelphia, PA” in ink, frame back.
Provenance: private collection, Philadelphia.
Exhibited:Black Matri-Images, Morgan State College Gallery of Art (now known as the James E. Lewis Museum of Art), Baltimore, MD, December 3, 1972 - January 15, 1973, with gallery label on the frame back.
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France is an impressionistic painting by Laura Wheeler Waring completed while she was traveling through southwestern France. Completed the same year as The Houses of Semur, 1925, this work is of a hilly and very scenic commune in the Pyrénées foothills. Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port was a popular stop for pilgrims en route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Untitled (Portrait of a Boy in a Sailor Suit).
Silver print, 1927. 177x127 mm; 7x5 inches. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “Copyright 1969 by James VanDerZee All Rights Reserved, Vintage Print, Certified Donna VanDerZee” in pencil with James VanDerZee’s “G.G.G. Photo Studio, Inc., 109 West 135th St.” ink stamp, verso.
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Couple in Raccoon Coats, 1932 (Couple, Harlem).
Silver print, 1932. 95x119 mm; 3¾x4⅝ inches. Initialed, titled and dated '81 in pencil on the mount. Printed in 1981.
This photograph of a Harlem couple dressed in fur with their Cadillac on West 127th Street is VanDerZee's most iconic image.
Laura wheeler waring (1887 - 1948)
Still Life with Fruit and Flowers.
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1930s. 546x711 mm; 21½x28 inches. Signed in pencil, upper right recto. Inscribed with the artist’s studio address “756 N. 43rd St., Philadelphia, PA” in ink, verso.
Provenance: private collection, Philadelphia.
This modernist still life is a scarce example of Laura Wheeler Waring’s painting from the early 1930s. It displays Waring’s painterly exploration within the bounds of traditional genre painting, and the influence of post-Impressionism on her development. One of her larger and best known works from the period is the exuberant floral painting Still Life, 1928, which was once in the Evan-Tibbs Collection of Washington, DC.
Waring began painting watercolors in her early teens and won several awards before graduating from the Hartford Public High School in 1906 and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in 1914. Her distinguished career included two periods of study in Paris. The first sojourn was interrupted by the beginning of World War I, and she eventually returned to Paris in June 1924. This second period is widely regarded as a turning point in her style as well as her career. Waring painted portraits until October when she enrolled for a year of painting study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. There she studied with Boutet de Monvel and met Henry Ossawa Tanner and Gwendolyn Bennett - enjoying her “only period of uninterrupted life as an artist with an environment and associates that were a constant stimulus and inspiration. My savings, however, would not allow me to continue this life indefinitely.” In addition to the Harmon Foundation in New York, Waring exhibited at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia and Howard University through the 1940s. Her paintings today are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and Howard University. Sharpley-Whiting pp. 86-87.
Beulah woodard (1895 - 1955)
African Woman.
Oil on cotton canvas, circa 1935. 610x508 mm; 24x20 inches.
Provenance: the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, Los Angeles, sold at Swann Galleries on October 4, 2007; private collection, Pennsylvania.
Exhibited: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1935.
Beulah Woodard was the first significant African American female artist working on the West Coast. This very rare example of Woodard’s painting was exhibited in her important one-woman show of sculpture and painting at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1935, the first solo exhibition there for an African American. According to Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, African Woman is likely a portrait of Maudelle Bass Weston, the dancer and model who also posed for the ceramic bust entitled Maudelle. Thousands visited the exhibition, and Los Angeles newspapers and the Associated Press covered the story. Her portraits of African people are noted for their realism and attention to detail; this is one of only a few known paintings.
Hale woodruff (1900 - 1980)
A Youth.
Linoleum cut on wove paper, 1934. 108x77 mm; 4¼x3⅜ inches, wide margins. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin. A later impression, printed in the 1970s.
In 1931, Hale Woodruff was hired by Dr. John Hope to found the art department of Atlanta University, teaching undergraduate students at Morehouse College and Spelman College. Between 1931 and the mid 1940s, he also created a series of linoleum block prints that showed the experiences of African Americans and scenes around Atlanta. Another impression of this scarce print, titled Georgia Youth, is in the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection and Foundation.
Samuel joseph brown (1907 - 1994)
Writing Lesson.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1937. 219x193 mm; 8⅝x7⅝ inches, full margins. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin. Published by Works Progress Administration (WPA), Federal Art Project, Philadelphia.
Additional impressions are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Born in Wilmington, NC, Samuel Joseph Brown studied at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) and received a Master of Arts equivalent degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He began teaching for the Philadelphia public school system in 1938, and was there for over 35 years. Brown participated in the Federal Art Project of the WPA from 1933 - 1948, and his work was praised by Eleanor Roosevelt.
William e. smith (1913 - 1997)
Pay Day.
Linoleum cut on thin wove paper, 1938. 206x152 mm; 8⅛x6 inches, wide margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 16/20 in pencil, lower margin. A good, dark impression of this scarce, early print.
Smith made another linoleum cut of this subject, with the pose reversed; impressions dated 1941 are in the collections of Hampton University, VA, and Harmon and Harriet Kelley, San Antonio.
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled.
Watercolor on thin Japan paper, 1936. 216x224 mm; 8½x8 7/8 inches. Signed in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: Drs. L. Morris and Adrienne L. Jones; thence by descent, private collection, New Jersey. L. Morris Jones, M.D. (1929 - 2015) and Adrienne Lash Jones, Ph.D. (1935 - 2018) married in 1957 and moved to Cleveland in 1958. Dr. Lash Jones was a tenured professor of Africana studies at Oberlin College, where she became head of the Africana department (formerly known as Black Studies) for 20 years. Lash Jones became a prominent figure in the Cleveland art scene - including being a long time board member of the Cleveland Museum of Art and Karamu House - where she championed countless efforts to support Black art and culture.
Illustrated: Leslie King-Hammond,Hughie Lee-Smith (The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art, Volume VIII, plate 4, p. 4.
This extremely scarce work on paper is the earliest painting we have located that displays Hughie Lee-Smith’s interest in depicting isolated figures in an urban landscape. In 1936, Hughie Lee-Smith was in his second year as a student at the Cleveland School of Art where he was awarded a scholarship by the Gilpin Players at Karamu Theater and Settlement House. As part of his scholarship, he also taught art at Karamu House in Cleveland until 1939, alongside other artists Charles Sallée, Elmer Brown, and William E. Smith. Lee-Smith graduated with honors in 1938, and then won a scholarship to continue studying for a fifth year. Lee-Smith’s noteworthy rise was recognized by his inclusion in Alain Locke’s The Negro in Art, published in 1940.
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Man Sitting.
Graphite and pencil on buff wove paper, 1938. 305x229 mm; 12x9 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower center.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to a private collection.
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Policeman Beating Man and Protestor with Sign).
Pencil on buff wove paper, 1938. 177x133 mm; 7x5¼ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to a private collection.
Exhibited: Stages of Influence: The Universal Theatre of Hughie Lee-Smith, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM, February 6 - June 3, 2001.
Hughie Lee-Smith drew this striking image of the police violently breaking up protests in 1938. His sketchbook included many Depression-era scenes of workers and food lines. That same year, Hughie Lee-Smith graduated with honors from the Cleveland School of Art, and worked for the Federal Arts Project of the Ohio Works Progress Administration as a printmaker from 1938-40. While working for the WPA, Lee-Smith developed his interest in social realism and documented the civic unrest he saw. Lee-Smith incorporated a similar scene in his 1939 lithograph Artist Life #2.
Augusta savage (1892 - 1962)
Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp).
Cast white metal painted gold, 1939. Approximately 270x240x100 mm; 10¾x9½x4 inches. Stamped signature and “Worlds Fair 1939” at the base. Published by Augusta Savage Studios, Inc., New York, with the studio printed paper label on the base underside.
Provenance: Daniel Webster Perkins, Esq., Jacksonville, FL; thence by descent, private collection, Florida.
Daniel Webster Perkins (1879 - 1972) was a prominent attorney in Florida and one of the state’s first African American lawyers, having been officially admitted to the Florida Bar in 1914. After practicing law in Knoxville, Tennessee and Tampa, Florida, he settled in Jacksonville in 1919, where he practiced until his death in 1972. Mr. Perkins was a strong proponent of civil rights and a community leader; in 1968, the former Colored Lawyers Association of Jacksonville changed its name to the D.W. Perkins Bar Association in honor of Perkins, who had been a founding member. During a family vacation to the 1939 World’s Fair, Perkins purchased Savage’s souvenir replica.
Exhibited: Through Our Eyes 2000; Lift Every Voice and Sing, the Ritz Theatre LaVilla Museum, Jacksonville, Florida, February 8, 2000.
Augusta (Christine Fells) Savage was born in Green Cove Springs, just south of Jacksonville. After first exhibiting her sculpture in Palm Beach and Jacksonville, Savage moved to New York to study sculpture. She was admitted to the Cooper Union School of Art in 1921, and completed the four year course in three years. In 1929 and 1931, Savage was the recipient of two successive Rosenwald Grants, which enabled her to travel to France and study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. When she returned to New York in 1932, she opened the Savage School of Arts and Crafts in Harlem, where her students included William Artis, Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis. In 1935, she was a founding member of the Harlem Artists Guild, and from 1936 - 1937 she worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project as the Director of the Harlem Community Art Center.
A life-size version of Lift Every Voice and Sing was commissioned by the 1939 New York World’s Fair committee in 1937. Savage left the WPA to work on this monumental project, inspired by Jacksonville brothers James Weldon and Rosamund Johnson’s anthem Lift Every Voice. Her iconic sculpture stood almost 16-foot high, in painted, cast plaster on the grounds of the fair. Sadly, the original work was destroyed when the fair was over - it is known today only from photographs and these smaller versions which were cast by the artist to be sold as souvenirs.
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Julius.
Painted plaster on a wooden base, circa 1940. 190x114x102 mm; 7½x4½x4 inches (not including base). Incised with the artist's signature, backside of head. A later cast, made in Jamaica in the 1960s.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist in Jamaica, private collection; thence by descent, private collection.
This bust was originally commissioned by the photographer Carl Van Vechten, Richmond Barthé’s friend. The young boy Julius was Van Vechten's housekeeper’s nephew. In October of 1940, Van Vechten photographed the sculpture decorated with a feather headress - images are in the Carl Van Vechten Papers, in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. A bronze cast of Julius is in the collection of the Pennyslyvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
Allan rohan crite (1910 - 2007)
The Annunciation.
Brass plaque, with plaster and bronze backing, 1940. 178x140 mm; 7x5½ inches. Inscribed signature and date, lower right recto. With the artist’s typed label on the frame back, signed and numbered (3) in ink.
Provenance: collection of the artist, Boston; the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Joseph delaney (1904 - 1991)
Portrait of a Woman in Windsor Chair.
Oil on masonite board, circa 1940. 787x597 mm; 31x23½ inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; private collection.
This striking painting is an excellent, early example of Joseph Delaney’s portraiture. His direct, expressive approach conveys the immediacy of the sitting. The Windsor chair is also the same chair that Georgia O’Keefe used in Beauford Delaney’s portrait.
Joseph delaney (1904 - 1991)
Untitled (Still Life with Flowers and Chinese Plate).
Oil on canvas board, 1940. 762x559 mm; 30x22 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired at Swann Galleries December 15, 2015; private collection, New York.
This unusual still life by Joseph Delaney is a beautiful study in a limited palette. Delaney moved from his native Tennessee to New York in 1930 at the age of 26, where he studied at the Art Students League with Thomas Hart Benton. In 1932, he exhibited in the first Washington Square Outdoor Art Show and continued to work as a sketch artist there. From 1934 to 1940, Delaney worked for the WPA on projects in New York City including the Index of Design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pier 72 mural, and the Story of the Recorded Word mural at the New York Public Library.
Post-War
John wilson (1912 - 2015)
Interrogation (Study for Lithograph).
Watercolor, ink and crayon on cream wove paper, 1944. 267x178 mm; 10½x7 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: Sragow Gallery, New York; Patricia and Donald Oresman, New York; private collection, New York.
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Domestic Worker.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1946. 546x390 mm; 21½x15⅜ inches, full margins. From a presumed edition of 50. Signed in pencil, lower margin. Published by the Taller de Gráfica Popular, Mexico City.
Provenance: from the estate of Dr. Lewis W. Marshall, Sr., Washington, DC; thence by desent, private collection, Washington, DC.
This very scarce print is the first lithograph Catlett created at the Taller de Gráfica Popular upon her move to Mexico in 1946 and the first lithograph she printed in Mexico. It coincides with her I am the Negro Woman linoleum cut series, 1946 - 1947, which was the print series Catlett began when she arrived in Mexico. Another impression of Domestic Worker is in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. This is only the third impression to come to auction.
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
…special houses.
Linoleum cut on cream wove paper, 1946-47. 105x152 mm; 4⅛x6 inches, full margins. A later printing, from the 1989 edition. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 18/20 in pencil, lower margin. From the I am the Black Woman series.
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled (Two Seated Figures)
Pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1940s. 229x159 mm; 9x6¼ inches. Signed “Norman Lewis/OBL” in ink, lower right, posthumously by the artist’s widow Ouida Lewis.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York; private collection.
Illustrated: Norman W. Lewis: Works on Paper, 1935 - 1979, Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, p. 64.
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled.
Oil on cotton canvas, 1947. 768x406 mm; 30¼x16 inches. Signed and dated “3-47” in oil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York; thence by descent, private collection, North Carolina.
This modernist oil painting is a striking and scarce example of the earliest abstraction by Norman Lewis, from his first full year painting completely abstract. By fall 1946, Lewis joined the Marian Willard Gallery in New York, and began a new series of linear abstract paintings in the spring of 1947. Untitled is closely related to his Magenta Haze and Twilight Sounds, collection of the St. Louis Museum of Art, each dated March 1947. Their ground’s distinct color adds atmosphere to each composition. At this time, Norman Lewis was also clearly inspired by jazz and improvisation–Duke Ellington wrote his blues-inflected composition Magenta Haze in 1946. His first solo exhibition at the Willard Gallery in 1949 included six paintings from 1947: Magenta Haze, Spring, Street Scene, Subway, Reflection and Twilight Sounds. Other notable 1947 paintings in are Autumn, collection of the Worcester Art Museum, <Changing Moods, the Mott-Warsh Collection and Meeting, the collection of Raymond J. McGuire.
Charles sebree (1914 - 1985)
Untitled (Portrait).
Tempera on masonite board, 1947-48. 323x250 mm; 12¾x 9⅞ inches. Signed and dated indistinctly in pencil, verso.
Provenance: collection of the artist; gifted to the artist Harold Cousins, thence by descent to private collection; private collection, New York.
Charles Sebree is best known for his enigmatic depictions of romantic, harlequin-like figures inspired by the theater and the art of Rouault and Picasso. Born in Kentucky, Sebree emerged as a member of the Chicago art scene, working for the Illinois Federal Art Project in the WPA easel painting division from 1936-38. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and taught at the Southside Community Art Center with Margaret Burroughs and Eldzier Cortor before moving to New York in 1940. Today, his work is found in the collections of the St. Louis Art Museum, Howard University Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Toussaint L’Ouverture.
Color pastel and charcoal on thin buff wove paper, 1949. 432x381 mm; 17x15 inches. Signed and dated in pastel, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This striking portrait of the Haitian national hero, revolutionary leader and general François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture is a significant 1940s drawing by Richmond Barthé - a very scarce study for an important Haitian commission.
In the fall of 1948, Barthé was awarded commissions by Haiti’s president Dumarais Estimé - a new coin with Estimé’s profile and two large public monuments to honor both L’Ouverture and his successor Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The monuments were by far the largest commissions Barthé had taken on - envisioned as part of a grand two hundredth anniversary commemorating Port-au-Prince’s founding as the nation’s capital. For L’Ouverture’s portrait, in 1949, Barthé hired Ural Wilson from Katherine Dunham’s dance company as a model. The artist translated his model dressed in period costume and holding a sword into a larger than life heroic figure. The bronze was cast in New York and shipped to Haiti in 1950, but it was not publicly unveiled until 1954, after Barthé had completed the second monument of Dessalines for the new president Paul Magloire. Vendryes pp. 143, 150-154.
Marion perkins (1908 - 1961)
Untitled (Head of a King).
Carved marble, mounted on a granite base, circa 1950 -1955. Approximately 330x241x51 mm; 11 3/4x9½x2 inches (not including the base). Incised signature on the backside.
Provenance: private collection, Chicago; private collection, South Carolina; private collection (2012).
This marble carving is an exceptional and extremely scarce work of the great Chicago sculptor Marion Perkins. Born in Marche, Arkansas, at the age of eight, Perkins was sent to live with relatives on the South Side of Chicago in 1916. Marion Perkins attended Wendell Phillips High School, the first Chicago high school where the majority of the students were African American. He soon married Eva Gillon, who became his model and muse; they had three sons and settled in Bronzeville. While interested in theatre and literature, Perkins worked a series of menial jobs to support his family until he acquired a newstand in the late 1930s. Perkins then had the resources and time to create an outdoor studio in his backyard. Not only a talented stone carver, the self-taught artist also carved in wood, and modelled in clay, plaster and steel wire.
Perkins first gained attention in 1940 with two stone works included in the American Negro Exposition. With the opening of the Southside Community Art Center that year, Perkins had an artistic venue where he could both exhibit and teach; he soon became an important figure of the Chicago Renaissance. His first triumph was being invited to exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago’s prestigious Annual Exhibition of American Art in 1942 where he showed his powerful limestone carving John Henry. After participating in several invitational exhibitions, in 1947 the IBM Corporation acquired his Figure at Rest. Then in 1948, his beautiful marble Ethiopia Awakening won the prize in sculpture at the Art Institute’s Annual Exhibition of Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, and Perkins was awarded an esteemed Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowship grant.
Perkins’s direct approach to stone sculpture is epitomized by his iconic 1950 Man of Sorrows. This powerful African American head of Christ with a crown of thorns was the sensation of the 1951 annual Chicago artists invitational at the Art Institute; it was featured in an Ebony magazine profile, and acquired by the museum. Perkins often found such fine materials in vacant lots and abandoned houses on the South Side. With Untitled (Head of a King), Perkins was not deterred by the narrowness of the marble slab - he rendered this regal head in three dimensions by carving the profile in the thin outer edges. This distintictively modern approach, influenced by Brancusi and Modigliani, is also seen in his pair of limestone heads, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, circa 1955. Despite these successes and widespread acclaim in Chicago, Perkins never received national recognition.
His sculptures are found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, and the National Gallery. Marion Perkins continues to exert his influence on contemporary art today. Kerry James Marshall’s monumental picture, Souvenir III, 1998 includes a homage to the artist in his painting, along with Bob Thompson, Zora Neale Hurston, Dorthy Dandridge, and Augusta Savage. Perkins/Flug/Lusenhop pp. 2-7, 20; Schulman p. 138.
John wilson (1922 - )
Boulevard de Strasbourg.
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1950. 305x432 mm; 12x17 inches, full margins, with the registration marks. Artist’s proof, aside from an edition of an unknown size. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “Artist Proof” in pencil, lower margin. A good, bright impression of this very extremely scarce print.
In 1947, John Wilson won the James William Paige Traveling Fellowship and moved to Paris, where he worked in Fernand Léger’s studio. Here, Wilson’s use of shapes and forms resemble the rotund, elongated compositions favored by his teacher. By 1950, Wilson earned the John Hay Whitney Fellowship and moved to Mexico City.
Another trial proof of this print is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
Westchester Graduation Ball.
Brush and ink on thick cream wove paper, 1951. 232x552 mm; 9⅛x21¾ inches. Signed in ink, lower right.
Provenance: gift from the artist, Rev. Dr. Alger L. and Jesse M. Adams, Hasting-on-Hudson, NY; thence by descent, private collection, New York.
In June 1951, Westchester African American community leaders, Rev. Alger L. Adams and his wife, Jessie, of Hastings-on-Hudson, sponsored a cotillion-styled ball at Sarah Lawrence College for 1,951 of Westchester’s Black high school graduates. Inspired by the notion of a cotillion, they formed a committee of community peers and executed the fête. A long-time family friend of the Adams’, Lawrence was asked to design the cover for the invitation. After the invitations were printed, the original painting was returned to the Adams. Then Lawrence waved away their offer to return the original and instead gifted it to them.
This wonderful, elegant drawing is both a significant example of Jacob Lawrence’s mid-career work on paper, and a notable modern representation of Black social history. In 1951, Lawrence began a series of paintings that explored similar themes of performance - including Vaudeville, collection of the Hirshorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Chess on Broadway, exhibited at Twenty Eighth Venice Biennale and Magic on Broadway. He also made two other versions of this illustration that year -Untitled (Dance A) and Untitled (Dance B). All three are illustrated in the artist’s 2000 catalogue raisonnné by Peter Nesbitt & Michelle DuBois.
With– a copy of the June 13, 1951 program with the drawing illustrated on the front and back covers. This is an original copy of the 11 page printed invitation and keep-sake, listing the agenda, dance card and all participants and sponsors. Nesbett/DuBois 51-05.
John biggers (1924 - 2001)
Untitled (Study for the Word).
Conté crayon on cream wove paper, 1951. 355x508 mm; 14x20 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, Texas.
Exhibited: Private Treasure, Public View, San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas, February 2 - March 14, 1985.
This scarce study was created by Biggers as a preparatory work for the figures he used in two murals: The Contributions of Negro Women to American Life and Education, for the Blue Triangle Community Center, Houston, TX, 1954 and The History of Negro Education in Morris County, Naples, TX, 1955. The lithograph, The Word, 1965 also features these two men, who symbolize advancement and education for African Americans.
John wilson (1922 - 2015)
Mother and Child.
Lithograph on wove paper, 1952. 533x469 mm; 21x18½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 20/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by José Sanchez and published by the Taller de Gráfica Popular, Mexico City.
John Wilson’s Mother and Child, a study for the 1952 mural, now destroyed, The Incident, is one of his most impressive lithographs. This is the larger and earlier of the two versions of this print. In addition to some differences in the drawing, in this version, the artist’s signature and date are also added in the stone, lower left. Other impressions are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
Folk Singer.
Linoleum cut on artificial Japan paper, 1957. 907x455 mm; 35¾x18 inches, full margins. Edition of 30. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “Ed/30” in pencil, lower margin.
In this wonderfully expressive linoleum cut, Charles White reinterprets his iconic 1957 ink drawing Folk Singer (Voice of Jericho: Portait of Harry Belafonte).
Harry Belafonte was a important figure to Charles White - a friend, patron, collaborator and inspiration. In the late 1950s, White made musicians, singers and actors the subjects of his work–from the famous to the anonymous. While they had met in the early 1950s through their membership in the Committee for the Negro Arts, White and Belafonte became close friends and collaborated often once White moved to California. Andrea Barnwell describes how “with a generous gift from their dear friend Harry Belafonte,” Frances and White rented a house from friends on Summit Avenue in Pasadena in 1956, before they moved to nearby Altadena. Belafonte also wrote the introduction to White’s 1958 ACA Gallery exhibition catalogue when he first exhibited Folk Singer, and the foreword to the 1967 book Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White. In the latter, Belafonte describes the profound connection he made to the work of Charles White: “You are enriched by the experience of having known Charles White’s people, who are like characters from a great novel that remain with you long after the pages of the book have been closed.” Through White’s hand, we become familiar with this great singer.
This is a very scarce print and only the second to appear at auction. While the intended edition was inscribed as 30, Lucinda Gedeon noted an edition of 25. We know the location of only a few other impressions of Folk Singer. An impression, titled Voice of Jericho and dated 1958, in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art was exhibited in the recent travelling exhibition Charles White: A Retrospective. Oehler/Adler pl. 79, cat. 59; Barnwell p. 61; Gedeon Eb 12; Horowitz p. 1.
Aaron douglas (1899 - 1979)
Untitled (Landscape).
Etching on cream wove paper, circa 1952-56. 114x254 mm; 4½x10 inches, full margins. Artist’s proof, aside from an unknown edition. Signed, titled (illegible) and inscribed “a/p” in pencil, lower margin.
This small but expansive landscape was executed after Aaron Douglas achieved his second Carnegie Foundation grant through the Improvment of Teaching Project in 1952 and spent the summer traveling the American West. Earle p. 220.
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Woman with Pearl Choker).
Oil on masonite board, 1954. 300x222 mm; 11 3/4x7 3/4 inches. Signed and dated in oil, upper right.
Provenance: Anna L. Werbe Gallery, Detroit; private collection, Michigan.
Hughie Lee-Smith had a solo exhibition at the Anna L. Werbe Gallery in 1954, and exhibited there through the 1950s.
This elegant and enigmatic portrait shows the growing influence of surrealism on the mid-1950s paintings of Hughie Lee-Smith.
Harold cousins (1916 - 1992)
Viking.
Welded steel, mounted on a wooden base, 1952. Approximately 787x533x203 mm; 31x21x8 inches. Incised signature, mid-center.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Marc Cousins, New York, private collection (2006).
Exhibited: on loan and view at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 2013-2022.
This significant steel sculpture by Harold Cousins comes from an important early body of modernist work, made during his first decade in Paris. Born and raised in Washington DC, Cousins attended Howard University and served in the Coast Guard during World War II. Cousins then moved to New York, enrolled at the Art Students League and focused on creating sculpture. While there, Cousins studied under William Zorach, Will Barnet and Reginald Marsh, and also met his wife Peggy Thomas. They moved to Paris in October of 1949. Cousins first studied with Ossip Zadkine, and became close friends with artists Karel Appel and Shinkichi Tajiri, a fellow student of Zadkine’s. Cousins also joined a community of expatriate African American artists in Paris including Ed Clark, Beauford Delaney, Herbert Gentry and Larry Potter. With funding from the GI Bill, many American artists moved to Paris to be at the forefront of the post-war art world.
Viking is an iconic example of Cousins’s mature postwar practice in Paris. Inspired by the Spanish modernist Julio Gonzalez, the first artist of the era to explore a new technique of welding steel, Cousins created delicate, expressive sculptures, which brought him great acclaim in Europe. Viking is similar to Cousins’s La Reine, 1952, in the collection of the Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University - its dynamic form takes on strikingly different shapes from different view points. The first major exhibition of these steel sculptures was at Galerie Raymond Creuse in Paris in 1954.
A group of these early works were reunited in 1996, and included in the Studio Museum in Harlem traveling exhibition Explorations in the City of Light: African-American Artists in Paris, 1945-1965. Early 1950s steel sculptures by Cousins are in several museum collections today, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. Holman-Conwill pp. 62-63.
Emilio cruz (1938 - 2004)
Untitled (Abstraction in Red).
Color pastels on cream wove paper, 1953. 635x800 mm; 25x32½ inches. Signed and dated “10-24-53” in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York.
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Joiners.
Watercolor and ink on wove paper, 1954. 457x610 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed in ink, lower right recto. Titled and dated in pencil, upper left verso.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, with the label on the frame back; private collection.
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled.
Ink on buff handmade Japan paper, 1958. 482x662 mm; 19x24½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: Bill Hodges Gallery, New York; private collection.
Hale woodruff (1900 - 1980)
Vertical Motion.
Sepia and black inks on textured wove paper, circa 1955. 400x502 mm; 15¾x19¾ inches. Signed in ink, lower left. Titled in graphite on a fragment of the previous frame’s backing paper.
Provenance: Earl B. and Kathryn Dickerson, Chicago; thence by descent, private collection.
Earl Dickerson (1891 - 1986) was a prominent African American attorney. Known as “the dean of Chicago’s Black lawyers,” Dickerson in 1933 became the first African American appointed as Illinois Assistant Attorney General. He also was counsel and the eventual president and CEO of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company. Famously, Dickerson successfully argued before the U. S. Supreme Court in the landmark Hansberry v. Lee case. Kathryn Dickerson (1905 - 1980) studied fashion at the Art Institute of Chicago. She later served as a founding officer of the South Side Community Art Center, and was one of the organizers of the American Negro Exposition of 1940. Both Dickersons were avid patrons of the arts in Chicago.
This Hale Woodruff abstraction is a scarce example of a mid-career work on paper by the artist.
Felrath hines (1913 - 1993)
Bouquet.
Oil on burlap canvas, 1957. 787x1187 mm; 31x46¾ inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled and dated in oil, center verso.
Provenance: Park Avenue Gallery, Mount Kisco, NY; private collection, Connecticut (1960); private collection (2016), acquired from Swann Galleries, April 7, 2016.
Bouquet is a significant mid-century painting by Felrath Hines - a scarce large canvas from his first abstract period. Born in Indianapolis, Hines studied painting and design at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he befriended artist Charles Sebree. Inspired by Sebree, Hines moved from Chicago to New York in 1946. In the 1950s, he quietly developed an organic abstraction idiom while working in the shop of master framer Robert M. Kulicke. Through this close contact with the art world, Hines was both introduced to many other artists and his future career in art conservation.
Hines achieved critical recognition for these beautiful, painterly abstractions of nature with two solo exhibitions at Parma Gallery in 1957 and 1959, and his inclusion in group exhibitions at the John Heller Gallery and Parma Gallery in New York and the Barnett Aden Gallery in Washington, DC in the 1950s. In the late 1950s, Hines also met Romare Bearden, with whom he would later become a founding member of the Spiral Group in 1963. Several paintings from this breakthrough period of abstraction are now in institutional collections; including Transition, 1953, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Hanging Garden, 1954, SFMOMA, Untitled (Abstraction), circa 1960, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Untitled, 1960, Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled (Processional Composition Study.)
Oil and graphite on cream wove paper, circa 1955-60. 610x483 mm; 24x19 inches.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, with the label on the frame back; private collection.
Illustrated: Norman W. Lewis: Works on Paper, 1935 - 1979, Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, p. 56.
Earl hooks (1927 - 2005)
Untitled.
Thrown and hand-built glazed stoneware, 1957. Approximately 431x203x216 mm; 17x8x8½ inches. Signed and dated in pencil on the underside.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This large, modernist vessel featuring wonderful biomorphic shapes epitomizes Earl Hooks’s mid-career work in ceramics. It displays his commitment to exploring the relationships between design, balance, and form. Hooks rose to prominence due to his application of naturally occurring shapes to functional sculptures. His works take on bulbous shapes with intentional ceramic inclusions and a matte glaze that scatters reflected light in dispersed directions.
Hooks was one of 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, 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 the 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.
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Wine Star.
Oil on linen canvas, 1959. 1473x1067 mm; 58x42 inches. Signed in oil, upper left recto. Titled in oil, upper left verso.
Provenance: the artist; Michael Warren Gallery, New York; private collection, France (circa 1965); private collection, New York (2006); private collection (2015), acquired at Swann Galleries, December 15, 2015.
Exhibited: Michael Warren Gallery, New York, January 20 - February 19, 1960, with a fragment of the gallery label on the frame back; Abstract Romare Bearden, DC Moore Gallery, New York, February 13 - July 13, 2020; Romare Bearden: Abstraction, traveling exhibition, organized by the American Federation of Art and curator Dr. Tracy Fitzpatrick of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC, October 15, 2021 – January 9, 2022, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI February 5 – May 15, 2022.
Michael Warren Gallery was later renamed Daniel Cordier and Michael Warren Gallery, Inc. in 1961 before becoming Cordier and Ekstrom in 1962. This painting was included in a group of late 1950s abstract canvases exhibited in this solo exhibiton.
Illustrated: Roberta Smith, “Romare Bearden’s Seen Abstract Side”, The New York Times, March 19, 2020.
Wine Star is an excellent and significant example from Romare Bearden’s period of abstract color field painting of the late 1950s. Bearden’s development of abstraction was influenced by non-Western intuitive approaches to imagery. In the mid-1950s, Bearden had an interest in Zen Buddhism and studied calligraphy and Chinese landscape painting with a Chinese calligrapher. His late 1950s works display less of an interest in the activity of action painting of expressionism, as described by his friend the writer Harry Henderson in a 1989 interview - “He found a rationale by studying Zen philosophy. His works were always serene and lacked the tremendous physical involvement employed by the Abstract Expressionists.” Sharon Patton also described a “mystical elegance” in these abstract works, and the influence of Chinese painting is found in their asymmetry and an entry point into the painting. Patton illustrates this phase with Bearden’s Blue is the Smoke of War, White the Bones of Men, circa 1960, from the Harry B. Henderson collection and sold at Swann Galleries on September 15, 2005.
Bearden’s abstract painting impresses with its vital fluidity and technical virtuosity. Roberta Smith’s rave review of the 2020 DC Moore exhibition of Abstract Romare Bearden posits his abstract painting’s significance; “they effortlessly claim a place in the history of American postwar abstraction, stain painting division.” These beautiful paintings embrace accident, staining and the canvas through a technique of pouring, staining, dispersion and dripping. While Bearden’s period of experimental painting is later than the mid-1950s celebrated color field painting of Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler, his experimentation was independent; as Smith put it simply, “Bearden developed it on his own”. This notable chapter in his development has been largely overlooked until recently. The abstraction of Bearden is now the subject of a national traveling museum exhibition organized at the Neuberger Museum of Art by its director Tracy Fitzpatrick. Fine p. 222; Gelburd/Rosenberg p. 40; Patton p. 173.
Beauford delaney (1901 - 1979)
Ciel.
Color screenprint, 1960. 494x491 mm; 19x17⅜ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 22/36 in pencil, lower margin.
Illustrated: Patricia Sue Canterbury, Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris, The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, University of Washington Press, 2004 pl. 36, p. 111 (another impression).
Another impression of this scarce print is in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled.
Oil on cream wove paper, 1960. 508x762 mm; 20x30 inches. Signed and dated “2-16-60” in ink, lower left.
Provenance: McCarty Gallery, Chestnut Hill, PA; private collection, Pennsylvania.
This beautiful color field abstraction is an excellent example of Norman Lewis’ mid-career work on paper. The sheet has the printed Inkweed Arts illustrations on the verso - found on many of Lewis’ works on paper from the late 1950s and 1960s.
Charles alston (1907 - 1977)
Black and White #3 (Astral #3).
Oil on linen canvas, 1961. 1270x1016 mm; 50x40 inches. Signed in oil, upper right recto. Titled Black and White #3, dated and inscribed “50x40” in ink on the upper stretcher bar, verso; titled Astral #3, dated and inscribed “50x40” in ink on a notecard, thumb-tacked to the upper stretcher bar, verso; tilted Black and White #3 in ink on paper, taped to the lower stretcher bar.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent, private collection.
Exhibited: Charles Alston, Dunbarton Galleries, Boston, MA, March 24 - April 26, 1962; Charles Alston, The Gallery of Modern Art, New York, NY, December 3, 1968 - January 5, 1969. This retrospective, sponsored by Farleigh Dickinson University, included 53 paintings and 3 sculptures by Alston, including all eight of the Black and White paintings. They were exhibited alongside his other important series African Theme,Blues Singer and Family from the 1950s and 60s in the new New York museum designed by Edward Durell Stone at 2 Columbus Circle. In their chapter on Charles Alston, Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson wrote that Alston “considered the black and white abstractions in the retrospective of 1968 to be amongst his most important he had done.”
Black and White #3 is a striking and beautiful abstraction by Alston, a significant work from his important series of eight abstract paintings between 1959 and 1961. By 1960, Alston achieved wide recognition for his post war painting, including the Emily Lowe Memorial award for An Ancient Place, and a solo exhibition at Feingarten Galleries, New York that year. Like his friend Norman Lewis, Alston found the limited palette of black and white provided both aesthetic and narrative themes that enabled his abstraction to reflect a social and political consciousness. Alston and Lewis both effectively gave the color black new meaning at the height of the Civil Rights era struggles. In Black and White #3, Alston masterfully creates a dynamic composition through a great variety of applications of black paint on the white ground - from impastoed strokes to thin wash. His experimental approach includes dispersal, blotting and monotype.
Another painting from this series, Black and White II, circa 1960 is in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Two other known paintings from this series are illustrated in Alvia J. Wardlaw’s Charles Alston monograph, Black and White #1, 1959 and Black and White #7, 1961, which was also included in the Brooklyn Museum 2015 traveling exhibition Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties. Black and White #8 was sold at Swann Galleries on December 12, 2020.
The Black and White series also laid the foundation for Alston’s work in Spiral. As a founding member of the artist’s group in the summer of 1963, Alston, alongside the other abstract painters Lewis, Merton Simpson and Hale Woodruff, advocated for an art that could address Black identity and the social and political issues confronting African Americans during the Civil Rights struggle. The Spiral group’s first and only exhibition First Group Showing: Works in Black and White, May 14 - June 5, 1965, continued his monochromatic theme. Bearden/Henderson, Jr., p. 269; Wardlaw p. 91 and 93.
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Untitled (Black and White).
Gouache and ink on cream wove paper, 1961. 457x609 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands.