December 2015 African American Fine Art Auction

African American Fine Art December 2015

AFRICAN AMERICAN FINE ART

DECEMBER 5, 2015

AUCTION: SESSION FOUR - 20th Century Art & Design Auction LOCATION: John Toomey Gallery - Oak Park, IL TIME: 10 AM CST (Session 4 begins at approximately 4:00 PM CST) PREVIEW DATES: Saturday, November 28 - 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Sunday, November 29 - Closed Monday, November 30 - 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Tuesday, December 1 - 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Wednesday, December 2 - 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Thursday, December 3 - 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Friday, December 4 - 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m

For more information, please contact: Thom Pegg thom@treadwaygallery.com 708.383.5234

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A MESSAGE FROM THE SPECIALIST-IN-CHARGE I am pleased to present our second sale of African American Art at auction in Chicago for the year 2015. After having spent the last few months inspecting, researching, and cataloging this group of artworks, I feel I might have learned more about the artists and their relationships to their work this time than in any past sale. It is not unlike a teacher feeling at the end of the school year that he or she was particularly close with their class —except it is I who am doing the learning here! I imagine you, as collectors, feel similarly about, not only learning of an artist unfamiliar to you, but also discovering a part of an artist’s body of work you had not previously explored.

It draws us in and inspires us to want to learn more. Sometimes I feel a little frustrated with the auction format, because it requires me to be selective about what I have to say about an artist or his or her work. Perhaps thankfully, there are real time and space limitations to what is written in the catalog, so I choose an aspect of it that I found interesting and write it down with the hope that it works as a catalyst for further exploration on your end.

Of course, the biographical information relating to the artists is factual and pretty straightforward, but I also try to offer some narrative in certain cases, and those comments are really just opinions and ideas. That is why I would much prefer to be standing in a room with you all, having a conversation about the art—a dialogue, so that when it’s time to leave, we have contributed equally. That dialogue not only increases our understanding of the art, it fuels our enthusiasm for it.

This catalog platform allows me the luxury of providing much more than a typical auction catalog: an image of every artist, a biography of each, and when appropriate, a brief narrative with supporting images—but the sum of all of the information in this catalog is really just the beginning of our journey of discovery concerning these artists and their work. I invite you to contact me with any questions, comments, opinions, or ideas you might have concerning these works. If you are interested in the work of a particular artist, I would be happy to share my sources of information, suggest additional reading material, or even refer you to a person who is particularly knowledgeable concerning that artist—just give me a call or send me an email.

Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm,

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Benny Andrews (1930-2006)

Born in Madison, Georgia, the son of sharecroppers, Benny Andrews studied at Fort Valley State College (1948-50). After serving in the Korean War with the United States Air Force, he attended the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (1954-58), studying with Jack Levine and Boris Margo. He was generally viewed as an outsider, unyielding to the trends of abstraction popular in the mid1950s. His work focused on figurative social commentary depicting the struggles, atrocities, and everyday occurrences in the world, especially in the African American community. Working in virtually every two-dimensional medium, Andrews continued to pursue representational art, which has been his focus throughout his long career.

“Benny Andrews is a remarkable draftsman whose work is characterized by great economy of means,” Patricia P. Bladon wrote in Folk: The Art of Benny and George Andrews. “He infuses his drawings with the same integrity and passion which characterize his large-scale paintings.”

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Adversity did not deter him from honing his personal style, nor did increasing popularity quiet his social concerns. As his career flourished he continued to speak out on the inequalities facing African American artists and helped found the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition. He spent 29 years teaching art at Queens College and served as the Director of the Visual Arts program, a division of the National Endowment for the Arts (1982-84). His work received both critical praise and commercial acceptance. Elected to the National Academy of Design in 1977, he was awarded premier fellowships and exhibited widely in this country and abroad.

Today, his work is found in the collections of many major museums, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Detroit Institute of Art; Morris Museum of Art, GA; Hirshorn Museum, Washington D.C.; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

605 Everything that Rises Must Converge (print portfolio from The Limited Editions Club) 2005 color etching 25.5” x 19.5” (sheet size)

This portfolio contains title page, colophon, and six color etchings which were printed by hand on BFK Rives paper by Peter Pettengill at Wingate Studio. Red cloth-covered case with inset gilt-lettered leather title label and velvet lining. each signed and numbered 60/60 $4,000-6,000 This portfolio of colored etchings was used to illustrate a version of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”, offered by the Limited Editions Club in 2005. The similarities and differences of two southern artists, one white and the other black, resemble the plot of the story.

Andrews and O’Connor grew up only 30 miles apart in Georgia, although upon hearing an account of each’s life experiences, one would assume they existed worlds apart. Andrews explained in the afterword of the text edition (which is different than the portfolio that is being offered here which contains exclusively artwork) his motivation to illustrate a “white lady’s” book: “I’ve looked into her works and I’ve found revelations. I see her work as being of use in making a more powerful force than our two parallel lines make. The portions of the story that I chose to illustrate originate in O’Connor’s deteriorating old world, one that would end in a death that would haunt the descendants. Those choices make this volume a convergence, and it is my hope that they rise and in their rising converge two different worlds.”

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Benny Andrews (1930-2006)

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Ernie Barnes (1938-2009)

Barnes was born and raised in an impoverished part of Durham, North Carolina. He had been interested in art since he was a young boy, and although not initially very athletic, became a high school star football player and track star. He attended North Carolina Central University in his hometown, majoring in art and participating in football and track. Ed Wilson, sculpting professor at North Carolina Central University, taught Barnes to feel his movements while playing football and express that feeling in his work—a lesson Barnes never forgot. Barnes’ paintings, populated as they are with elongated figures reminiscent of Michelangelo’s later work, have been described as Neo-Mannerist. Other scholars have pointed to his use of visual rhythm to sublimate physical tension as evidence of Black Romanticism. Barnes explained that he painted

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his expressive, gesturing figures with their eyes closed in reference to society’s preoccupation with skin color and general blindness to the inner essence of the individual.

Barnes was drafted by the Baltimore Colts, and eventually played with the New York Titans, San Diego Chargers, Denver Broncos, and in the Canadian League before retiring. Sonny Werblin, the owner of the NY Jets met the artist in 1965 and began sponsoring his artistic endeavors. His first show, at Grand Central Galleries in New York, was a sellout.

His work is found in the collections of the University of California, La Jolla; University of Southern California, and many other private colleges.

583 The Graduate 1972 oil/canvas 14” x 18” signed

$20,000-30,000 Provenance: Gwen Gordy (Fuqua) of Motown fame bought the painting directly from the artist. Gwen Gordy Fuqua (1927-1999) was a legendary businesswoman, songwriter and composer, and the sister of Berry Gordy. She wrote hit songs, like “Lonely Teardrops”, “All I Could Do Was Cry”, and “Distant Lover”. She was a highly successful manager and record producer. The Graduate hung in her mansion in Beverly Hills, CA Exhibitions: The Beauty of the Ghetto, various venues.

Barnes created this exhibit, which included 35 paintings, and lasted from 1972-1979, hosted by celebrities, athletes, and dignitaries Catalogue Note: This work is housed in its original distressed wood frame. Barnes visited his parents in 1966, shortly before his first solo exhibition. His father had recently had a stroke and the usually well-maintained yard of his parents had fallen into disrepair.

After inspecting the well-worn picket fence, he placed one of his recent works against it, and realized how much he liked the contrast of the old and new. He used the wood from the fence as frame molding for his New York show. Barnes commented, “In tribute…Daddy’s fence would hug all my paintings..That would have made him smile.”

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John Biggers (1924-2001) Born in North Carolina in 1924, John Biggers’ body of work experienced a constant evolution throughout his career, yet consistently retained themes of southern African American culture rooted deeply in Africa. Biggers attended Hampton Institute (University) in the early 1940s, and befriended Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett.

Much of his early work was social realist - depicting the everyday hard work and perseverance of the African American community. In 1949, Biggers moved to Houston, TX and chaired the art department at Texas State University (later Texas Southern). He remained there until his retirement in 1983. As his work progressed, it became in-

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creasingly more abstract, utilizing symbols drawn from everyday life and later from African art.

Biggers’ work after 1980 was especially informed by the concept of “sacred geometry.” He used carefully constructed groups of 3, 4, and 7. Turtles, birds, quilt patterns, African combs, and xylophones are some of the repeated symbolic images found in his work.

Biggers’ work may be found in the collections of Atlanta University, GA; Barnett-Aden Collection, Washington D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Howard University, Washington D.C.; and the Smithsonian Institution.

612 Our Grandmothers (print portfolio from The Limited Editions Club) 1994 etching 24” x 18” (sheet size)

This portfolio contains title page, colophon, and five black and white etchings laid in a large cloth clamshell box with the artist’s name lettered in black on the front. each signed and numbered 48/60 $4,000-6,000 Maya Angelou asked her friend John Biggers to create illustrations for her poem, “Our Grandmothers”. Angelou’s poem, and Biggers’ pictorial representations speak to the strength and determination of African American women who birthed a nation while wrestling with seemingly unsurmountable obstacles placed before them.

Angelou said, “Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” The maternal figure in “Our Grandmothers” thinks to herself repeatedly, “I shall not be moved.”

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Alexander Skunder Boghossian (1937- 2003) The New York Times, reporting the artist’s death in 2003, described Boghossian as “an artist who played an important role in introducing European modernist styles into Africa and who, as a longtime resident of the United States, became one of the best-known African modern artists in the West.” It is quite likely that Boghossian would have objected to this description or at least to the danger of over-simplification. Elizabeth Giorgis, a contributing editor for Ethiopian Register, writing about an interview she had with Boghossian, stated: “His conversations allude to the cultural universe of Third world dependency where creativity as well as culture, history and pride has been pulled along in the whirligig of European meaningless behavior. To him, people of color through no fault of their own but through the systematic destruction of their culture, have imitated everything European and have despised traditional culture and race while they fail to understand their own true needs.”

and the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. In 1957 he moved to Paris where he studied and taught at L’École des Beaux Arts and L’Académie de la Grande Chaumiere.

Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that Boghossian used the knowledge of European artistic styles he discovered while in Paris when he returned to Ethiopia in the mid 1960s to express his true Ethiopian self, and in doing this, taking great care not to hide his true identity with the mask of a stranger. The exhibition, Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora, opened in 2003 just days before Boghossian’s death at the Museum of the National Center for Afro American Artists, Boston, MA.

Boghossian was an influential teacher in Paris, Ethiopia, and at Howard University’s School of Fine Arts (1974-2000). He was the first contemporary African artist to have his work purchased by the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1963. The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired his painting Juju’s Wedding (1964) in 1966, and the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of African Arts acquired several of his paintings in 1992. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Howard University, Washington D.C.; Merton Simpson Gallery, NY; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Skunder Boghossian was born in Ethiopia in 1937.

He received a government scholarship in 1955 to study art at St. Martin’s School, Central School, 14

In Paris, his artistic style was shaped by his personal experiences and the accumulation of his knowledge of modern Western art. He worked closely with African American artists and was influenced by the works of Paul Klée, André Breton, Georges Braques, and Max Ernst, as well as Afro-Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam and West African and Coptic art. His work incorporates diverse techniques and media with vibrant color, symbols, and motifs. Boghossian described all of his work as “a perpetual celebration of the diversity of blackness.” Boghossian met Marilyn Pryce in Paris who was originally from Tuskegee, Alabama and was the daughter of artist/landscape architect, Edward Pryce. The two were married in 1966 in Tuskegee, and later divorced in 1970.

Rosalind Jeffries, regarding an exhibit held at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1972, wrote “Skunder has continually evolved in the past under the influence of African philosophy and mythology.

There is one certain thing about his creations: they are pregnant with energy. His canvases bear witness to energy and force at a fantastic range of intensity, or vibrations. The energy is sometimes overpowering, violent, sometimes a mere frenzy, sometimes calm, sometimes a lyrical clear melody, but always in perpetual motion. These forces are not only inner forces but they relate to outer moons, suns, air, atmosphere, shifting patterns and images derived from Ethiopian sacred and folk art used throughout the centuries.�

Image credit: (detail) Healing Scroll, 18th–19th century Ethiopia, Tigray region, Tigrinya peoples Parchment, ink, pigments, cotton Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Alexander Skunder Boghossian (1937- 2003)

In Ancient Fog, the entire bottom half of the painting depicts what appears to be a multitude of healing scrolls or parchments, which have been prescribed by traditional healers for over 2000 years. These protective scrolls were carried on the person of the individual to whom they were specifically dedicated to shield them from harm, and interweave sacred imagery with textural prayers, specifically customized with astrological significance. In Ethiopia, as in ancient Greece, each human being has a corresponding zodiac sign associated with a particular destiny and talismanic character. The top half of the composition is divided in half again: on the left the sun is shining, but on the right a cloud, or fog, is either gathering or dissipating (the momentum is undeterminable). If this work directly addresses Ethiopia, it’s execution certainly coincides with a period of political and civil unrest, beginning with the oil crisis of 1973, and the reign of Haile Selassie coming to an end in 1974, when a Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist military junta, the

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“Derg” (led by Mengistu Haile Mariam) deposed him. The new regime was troubled with countless problems, including several coups, drought, and a huge refugee problem. The symbolism may be dual in meaning: Ethiopia was in desperate need of a healing, life was hard and also fragile, and a call for divine intervention from the its people would be a reasonable interpretation. Similarly, as addressed in an exhibit at the Museum for African Art in 1997, Art That Heals: The Image as Medicine in Ethiopia, by the 1970s, the art and the art’s purpose associated with traditional healing scrolls had waned, and become primarily confined to parts of the country untouched by modern life. Contemporary Ethiopian painting, while deriving some of its imagery from scrolls, was produced primarily with a western audience in mind, one versed in abstract art. In these paintings, the distinction between medicine and estheticism vanishes. (New York Times, 1997; Holland Cooter).

618 Ancient Fog

1975 oil on canvas 59” x 49” signed and dated lower left $22,000-28,000

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Sylvester Britton (1926-2009)

Born in 1926 on the South Side of Chicago, Sylvester Britton attended the Abraham Lincoln Center, a cultural center in Chicago. He received formal art training in Mexico City at the School of Painting and Sculpture for six years before returning to Chicago in 1952 where he studied at School of the Art Institute.

He later traveled to Europe, living and exhibiting work both in Paris and Sweden before earning enough money to travel back to the U.S. by making Christmas cards. When he returned to the United

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States, he was instrumental in the revival of the South Side Community Art Center and became its gallery director.

Britton exhibited at the Oak Park Library, Atlanta University, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the South Side Community Art Center. He was awarded the Eisendrath Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1956.

587 Path Through Trees oil on canvas 23” x 30” signed lower right $600-800

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Wendell Brooks (b. 1939)

Wendell Brooks was born in Aliceville, Alabama in 1939. He received his MFA in printmaking and a BS in art education from Indiana University. He has received numerous fellowships, scholarship and grants, including a Grant Award from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Art. Wendell Brooks’ work is inspired by explorations in self-discovery, as well as cultural diversity, African masks, and the African culture. Brooks served as Professor of Art at The College of New Jersey for a number of years, beginning in 1971, where he had access to his own printmaking shop.

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His work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions including Free Within Ourselves - American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of African Art and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. His work is also in many permanent collections including the Library of Congress, and the Macedonian Center of Contemporary Art in Greece. Brooks has also been featured in the African American Fine Arts Collection, published by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

594 Homage to the Black South

1976 etching 35� x 24� signed, titled and dated in pencil artist proof $2,000-3,000

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Marie Johnson Calloway (b. 1920) Educator and artist, Marie Johnson Calloway, depicts the “rough-hewn beauty”of ordinary individuals in realistic, representational terms using a variety of media such as weathered wood, worn clothing, and found objects. “As a black woman artist,” she writes, “I wished to look beneath the misconceptions with which history had covered my people and me. The one connecting thread through all of my work is my perception of my own world (which, too, has been an odd mix), and my continuous effort to interpret it in a personal way.”

Born in Maryland, Marie Johnson Calloway received degrees from Coppin Teachers College, Baltimore; Morgan State University, Baltimore; and San Jose State University, California, before settling down to teach. She was the first African-American public school teacher in San Jose.

In 1969, she became an assistant professor at

both the California College of Arts & Crafts and San Jose State University. She continues to live and work in Oakland, California at 95 years of age.

Solo exhibits include: Oakland Museum, California College of Arts & Crafts, Howard University, San Francisco City College, Triton Museum in Santa Clara, and the African American Cultural Center in San Francisco. Numerous group exhibits include the San Francisco Museum of Art (Marie Johnson and Betye Saar), Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles and Bennett College, North Carolina.

She participated in the landmark exhibit, Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980, (Hammer Museum, MoMA PS1, Williams College Museum of Art, 2012-2013) which chronicled the vital legacy of the city’s African American artists.

School Crossing Guard, c. 1970; mixed media/board, 65” x 55”; collection of the artist; featured in the exhibition, Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980

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626 Mother and Daughter c. 1970 wood cut-out assemblage 47� x 27� signed on label verso $8,000-12,000

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William Sylvester Carter (1909-1996) Born in St. Louis, MO, William Sylvester Carter moved to Chicago in 1930 to study art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois. In order to earn room and board, Carter worked as a janitor at the Palette and Chisel Club (an all-White club, to which he became an honorary member in 1986). He was among the artists represented in the American Negro Exposition assembled by Alonzo Aden, with the Harmon Foundation and the WPA. The same year, he exhibited at Howard University Gallery of Art. Carter also worked for the WPA in Illinois in 1943, and taught art at the historic South

642 Still Life

Side Community Center. His work may be found in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the DuSable Museum of African American History, and the South Side Community Art Center.

Carter’s work, The Card Game, 1950, was recently included in the exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, They Seek a City, Chicago and the Art of Migration (see cat., p 87); it also appears in The Black Chicago Renaissance, by Darlene Clark Hine and John McCluskey, Jr.

c. 1950 oil on canvas laid down on masonite 14” x 17.5” signed $1,500-2,000

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643 Cubist City

c. 1950 mixed media 23.5” x 20” signed lower right $1,500-2,000

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Mitchell Caton (1930-1998) Theodore Burns Mitchell, known by most people as Mitchell Caton, was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but relocated to Chicago as a young boy.

He attended DuSable High School, and according to his son, Tyler Mitchell, he was awarded a commission shortly after graduation to paint Sanders McMath, then governor of Arkansas.

That commission led to an art scholarship at the University of Little Rock. He also studied at the Art Students League in New York and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He settled in Chicago and was married in 1955. He worked as a mail sorter through the 1960s in the downtown Chicago post office, which is where he met Bill Walker.

In 1967, Walker participated in a project related to the Organization for Black American Culture, which was a community mural honoring African American heroes, known as The Wall of Respect.

Two years later, Caton was one of a group of artists who repainted the outdoor mural. Walker and Caton were involved in the insurgent Chicago Mural Group (now known as the Chicago Public

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Art Group) with fellow artists, John Pitman Weber and Eugene Eda. Caton quit his post office job to focus on his art. Around the same time, Caton frequented a place known as Universal Alley, a backstreet near 50th and Saint Lawrence, where large groups of people came together every Sunday to throw dice and listen to Jazz. Caton painted his first solo mural here, Rip-Off, which depicted a pair of dice and figures being held up. He later extended the mural, renaming it Universal Alley. He executed numerous outdoor and indoor murals, solo and jointly, with artists from the Chicago Mural Group such as Bill Walker and Calvin Jones. Caton’s slick visual style, with figures emerging from backgrounds of planes and colors, melding abstract design with narrative elements, was highly successful. Perhaps Caton’s most well-known collaboration is Wall of Daydreaming/ Man’s Inhumanity to Man a two section mural at the corner of 47th Street and Calumet (Chicago), painted with Bill Walker, Santi Isrowuthalkul, and John Pitman Weber.

621 Untitled

oil on canvas 19.5” x 35.5” signed lower right $5,000-7,000

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William Colvin (b. 1930)

Artist, curator and educator who lives and works in Alabama. In describing his work, Dr. Colvin says, “My work involves an expression of the acceptance and participation of humans in American society. The loyalty, humanitarianism, love and dedication of the unsung heroes/ heroines who have lived in this country’s history were not, too often, cited in the annals recording the nation’s past. Yet they were the bedrock of what made the country the nation what it is. I am focusing on being free from racial prejudice, Jim Crow laws or any suffering stemming from this type of political pressure. I am alluding to trials

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and tribulations which the young people passed through in a struggle to make a free life for us all. The journey to freedom is not easy, but the will and joy of the accomplishments have been and still are great. His work was included in the exhibition, Birmingham 2013: Remembering the Movement that Changed the World held at the Birmingham Public Library, which he also curated. Dr. Colvin was honored by Alabama State University’s National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture in 2012 for his achievements in visual art, education, and advocation of African American art.

593 Race Relations 1971 collage 54� x 72�

$2,500-3,500 Exhibitions: Afro-American Artists, National Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings & Prints, Indiana University, c. 1970 (label verso)

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Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007)

Allan Rohan Crite was born in New Jersey and moved with his family to Boston as an infant. His interest in art was encouraged at an early age.

He graduated from English High School in 1929 and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1936. Crite was one of the first artists to observe and depict average African Americans engaged in their daily activities, primarily in the South End, Cambridge and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston. According to Crite, “I’ve only done one piece of work in my whole life..I wanted to paint people of color as normal humans. I tell the story of man through the black figure.” Crite rejected the images of artists like Archibald Motley, Jr. and Palmer Hayden because he felt they were inaccurate in their portrayal of African American life--at least, in that those images were universal symbols. He earned the title of “reporter-artist”, rendering his subjects and scenery with such fine detail they appear almost like color photographs.

A devout Episcopalian, his work soon began to exhibit strong religious themes as well, depicting blacks in interpretations of Biblical stories and African American spirituals. Crite also wrote and

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illustrated several books, created hand-tooled brass panels that once adorned a monastery, and designed and painted vestments and banners for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge. His illustrations were published for many years in the 1970s and 80s as covers for Sunday service leaflets.

Crite’s work is exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2011, the Montgomery Museum of Art featured a series of exhibitions of print portfolios by prominent African Americans, including Crite’s The Revelation of St. John (1994), in its Williamson Gallery.

The prints were loaned from the collection of Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at the University of Alabama. Revelation was written at the height of Christians’ persecution at the hands of the Romans. The work cries passionately against the power of evil and exhorts Christians to resist, even at the cost of martyrdom, a message that has a special resonance for an African‑American artist, such as Mr. Crite.

603 The Revelation of St. John the Divine (print portfolio published by The Limited Editions Club) 1994 relief engraving 17.5� x 14.5� (sheet size)

Portfolio of fifteen relief engravings printed on Japanese paper, mounted individually on large folio sheets of handmade heavyweight Italian paper and laid in a burgundy linen-covered clamshell box, with gold-stamped leather title inset. each signed and numbered 4/60 $3,000-5,000

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Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007)

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Beauford Delaney (1901-1979)

Beauford Delaney’s talent was discovered by local and influential painter, Lloyd Branson whose support took him to Boston to study at the Massachusetts Normal School, the Copley Society, and the South Boston School of Art. In 1929, he moved to New York, where he became an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance, painting urban landscapes populated with the disenfranchised people he lived among, as well as portraits, sometimes of his famous friends.

Although he was a well respected artist with influential friends like James Baldwin, Henry Miller, and Georgia O’Keefe, he couldn’t escape the sense of marginalization he felt as an individual who constantly had to overcome the inequalities of being not only African American, but homosexual as well. He moved to Paris in 1950, a place where

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he felt a new sense of freedom. His style shifted from the figurative compositions of New York City life, to abstract expressionist studies of color and light, notably a vibrant, Van Gogh inspired yellow.

In 1956, he met Darthea Speyer, an American cultural attaché living in Paris. She organized a group exhibition of works which included Delaney at the American Cultural Center in 1966, as well as two solo exhibitions of his work at her gallery which was established in 1968. Delaney lived his remaining years in Paris, eventually being hospitalized for mental illness and dying in 1979.

His work may be found in the collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; the Smithsonian Institution, and Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, MA.

“He (Beauford) is about the only person in my life, who gave me generously of deep insights into life—without demanding tribute. A true artist—beyond this world!” (from a letter written to Wes Olmsted from Larry Calcagno in 1975) Lawrence (Larry) Calcagno (1913-1993) was an American abstract expressionist painter from San Francisco. Larry served in the army in WWII, and enrolled on the G.I. Bill to the California School of Fine Arts, studying with Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, and Clifford Still. He left for Paris in 1951 to study at L’Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. In the early 1950s, Calcagno and Delaney became friends and remained so until Beauford’s death. Larry took Beauford to Ibiza in 1956, where they were joined by James Baldwin. The book, An Artistic Friendship, Beauford Delaney and Lawrence Calcagno, by Joyce Henri Robinson (2001) is devoted entirely to the unlikely relationship of the two expatriate painters.

629 Portrait of a Young Man (Larry Calcagno) 1953 oil on canvas 31.75” x 25.5” signed and dated $15,000-20,000 Exhibitions: Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris; The Minneapolis Institute of Art, 11/04; Knoxville Museum of Art, 4/05; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 11/05.

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Joseph Delaney (1904-1991)

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1904, the younger brother of Beauford Delaney, Joseph Delaney, moved to New York City in 1930 where he enrolled at the Art Student’s League. During the Great Depression, he painted many portraits on commission and was employed by the WPA. Beginning in 1931, Delaney became a regular exhibitor at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit where he offered portrait sketches executed during the event. His work shows a great love of New York City where he remained for 55 years capturing dynamic urban scenes and diverse figures depicted in a loose, exaggerated style.

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In 1985, Delaney returned to Knoxville, where he was named artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee, until his death in 1991. His work can be found in the major collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Alain Locke Society, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J; Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and the Harlem State Office Building Art Collection, New York.

REF: Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney, catalog for the exhibition: Ewing Gallery, The University of Tennessee, 2004. Frederick Moffatt.

616 Young Deb

c. 1959 oil on canvas board 30� x 24.75� signed and dated titled verso label from the Department of Art, University of Tennessee $3,000-5,000

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Louis Delsarte (b. 1944 ) Louis J. Delsarte is an American artist of African and French ancestry known for what critics have referred to as his “illusionist” style. He is a painter, draftsman, muralist, printmaker, and poet. While growing up in New York City, Delsarte was surrounded by music including jazz, opera, musicals, and the blues. His parents were friends with artists and entertainers from the Harlem Renaissance like Lena Horne, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes. These influences along with his knowledge and interest in African American history and world culture have served as an inspiration for his art.

In an interview appearing in Colorline Magazine (Feb., 1989), Delsarte states, “I am constantly going through rage and rapture. My mood swings are a result of feelings accepted or rejected. Issues such as jealousy, fear, guilt, cause a war in my mind and a war on my nerves.” (REF: African American Art and Artists, Samella Lewis, 2003, pp. 184-185).

Delsarte’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout the United States including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. In 2001, his work was chosen as part of the exhibition, When the Spirit Moves: African American Dance in History and Art. He currently serves as professor of fine arts at Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA. Unity is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 38

Oscar Micheaux (American 1884-1951) was an important writer and early filmmaker. His 1918 novel, The Homesteader, attracted attention from a Los Angeles motion picture company, but nothing ever came to fruition. That inspired Micheaux to start his own Micheaux Film and Book Company of Sioux City (located in Chicago), which launched his highly successful career as a filmmaker.

Michelle Parkerson (American, contemporary) is an assistant professor at Temple University, and an independent film/video maker. Her themes focus on feminism, LGBT, and political activism.

Her films include: Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box, But Then…She’s Betty Carter , and Odds and Ends (an Afrofuturist lesbian science fiction story).

Melvin Van Peebles (American, b. 1932) is an actor, director and screenwriter. His most wellknown film was Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) . The soundtrack to the film was performed by Earth, Wind & Fire, and because Peebles had no money to advertise the film, the soundtrack was released first to generate publicity. It was initially shown in only two theaters, but eventually grossed over $4.1 million at the box office. Huey P. Newton celebrated the film’s militant black revolutionary theme, and it became required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party. The film received mixed critical reviews.

609

Oscar Micheaux 1990 watercolor, pastel, and pencil on paper 34” x 26.5” signed and dated lower right $2,500-4,000

610 Michelle Parkerson

635 Melvin Van Peebles

$2,500-4.000

$2,500-4.500

1990 watercolor, pastel, and pencil on paper 34” x 26.5” signed and dated lower right

1990 watercolor, pastel and pencil on paper 34” x 26.5” signed and dated lower right

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Sam Gilliam (b. 1933)

Since the 1960’s, Sam Gilliam has consistently worked in the abstract, exploring color, texture, and form with new and innovative techniques and media. He initially rose to prominence when he removed his richly pigmented canvases from their stretchers, draping them on walls or suspending them from the ceilings. With each new exhibition space, the canvas could be rearranged.

By the late seventies, Gilliam drew influence from jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He started producing dynamic geometric collages, which he called Black Paintings. In the 1980s, Gilliam’s style changed dramatically to quilted paintings reminiscent of African patchwork quilts from his childhood. His most recent works are textured paintings that incorporate metal forms. Gilliam’s ability to move beyond the draped canvas, coupled with his ability to adopt new series keeps the viewers interested and engaged. This has assured his

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prominence in the art world as an exciting and innovative contemporary painter.

Gilliam’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of African Art, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art; Phillips Collection; Washington Gallery of Modern Art; National Collection of Fine Arts; Corcoran Gallery; Howard University; Carnegie Institute; and the Walker Art Center, MN. Relevant examples of his work are illustrated in: Collecting African American Art, Halima Taha; African American Art and Artists, Samella Lewis; Tradition Redefined, The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, Brenda Thompson; African American Art, Harlem Renaissance Civil Rights Era and Beyond, Richard Powell and Virginia Mecklenburg; Narratives of African American Art and Identity, The David C. Driskell Collection.

646 Untitled

c. 1974 unique montype on handmade paper with elements of construction 25” x 34” signed and numbered 3/10

647 Untitled

c. 1974 unique monotype on handmade paper 24” x 36” signed and numbered 19/20 $600-800

$600-800

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Rex Goreleigh (1902-1986)

Painter, printmaker, and educator, Rex Goreleigh was born in Penllyn, Pennsylvania in 1902. At the age of eighteen, he moved to New York City where he began taking drawing classes while waiting tables to make ends meet. During one of his shifts, he happened to meet Diego Rivera, who invited him to watch him work on a mural he was painting at Rockefeller Center. After this, Goreleigh, who had previously been focused on a career in theater, decided to work in the visual arts. He received art instruction from the Art Students League in New York City, and in Paris, with AndrÊ Lhote at L’Academie Paris.

Under the auspices of the WPA, Goreleigh worked with Ben Shahn and taught at the Harlem Community Art Center - Jacob Lawrence and

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Robert Blackburn were among his students. He also established an artists community in Greensboro, North Carolina with Norman Lewis. In 1940, he and his wife re-located to Chicago where he served as director of the South Side Community Art Center. When his term ended, Goreleigh moved to New Jersey, becoming the director of the Princeton Group Arts from 1947 to 1953, and establishing a studio in a restored mill where he worked and taught classes.

His work is included in the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African-American Art, San Antonio, TX; Paul R. Jones Collection, University of Delaware; and the New Jersey State Museum.

595 Standing Nude

c. 1945 watercolor on paper 15� x 9� signed $800-1,200

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Bernard Goss (1913-1966)

Painter, muralist, and printmaker Bernard Goss was born in Sedalia, Missouri. He studied at the University of Iowa, as well as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Institute of Design.

Goss married fellow artist Margaret Burroughs in 1939, and their coach-house flat became a social center, dubbed “little Bohemia,” for a wide and interracial circle of friends and colleagues.

Burroughs and Goss worked together to help establish the South Side Community Art Center which opened in 1940. Goss’s 1939 painting Musicians appeared in Alain Locke’s, The Negro in Art.

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Goss exhibited at the Little Gallery, Iowa, 1934; Student Salon, IA, 1935; Illinois Federal Art Project; Library of Congress, 1940; American Negro Expostion, 1940; Tanner Art Gallery, 1940; Howard University, 1941; and the South Side Community Art Center, 1941,1945.

He was most recently included in the exhibit, Convergence: Jewish and African American Artists in Depression-era Chicago at the Koehnline Museum of Art at Oakton Community College (2008).

590 Southside Street

c. 1950 gouache on illustration board 14” x 19.5” signed $500-700

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Barkley Hendricks (b. 1945) Painter and photographer best known for his portraits of young, urban men and women rendered in a realist or post-modern style. Barkley L. Hendricks was born in 1945 in north Philadelphia.

He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts between 1963 and 1967 and graduated with a BFA and MFA from Yale University School of Art, where he studied photography with Walker Evans.

Hendricks was primarily a painter, his work incorporating photography more and more as his style evolved - rendering his subjects with exquisite detail to their clothing, shoes, jewelry, and other accoutrements. In 2008, his work was featured in the major exhibition, Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of Cool, organized by Trevor Schoonmaker, contemporary curator at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, NC. Of Hendricks work, Schoonmaker said, “His bold portrayal of his subject’s attitude and style elevates the common person to celebrity status. Cool, empowering, and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks’ artistic privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today’s younger generation of artists.”

In the late 60s in Philadelphia, Hendricks moved into a studio that was formerly occupied by a photographer, and the former occupant “had to get out of town fast” and had left all of his equipment, chemicals, etc. so he (Hendricks) self-taught/introduced himself to the darkroom.

By the time he landed at Yale, he had put together a portfolio of photography, and also began to “hang out with the photography people”.

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He presented the portfolio to Walker Evans, who was impressed because Hendricks had included an image in tondo and also by his subject matter.

Hendricks was commuting from New Jersey and passing through New York’s Port Authority, capturing images of a colorful cast of characters. Hendricks felt it reminded Evans of his own Subway Series.

Hendricks’ interest in photography has been resolute throughout his career. Sometimes he knows the subjects, but other times he meets them by chance. “One time I met this guy on the street in Philadelphia dressed completely in white holding a black briefcase — a white suit, hat, shoes. I was so attracted to his sense of style I asked if I could photograph him. This was around 1970. I kept the photograph for two or three years, then made a painting using white acrylic, oil and magna paint for a total monochromatic effect. I called it Dr. Kool .” (Dialoguemagazine.com) His work has also been featured in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Connecticut College; Jack Shainman Gallery, NY; Projectile Gallery, NY; Kenmore Galleries, PA; A.C.A. Galleries, NY; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA; Mitchell Algus Gallery, NY; Butler Institute of American Art, OH; Woodmere Art Gallery, PA; and the National Academy of Design. It is also found in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Studio Museum in Harlem; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and the Nasher Museum of Art, NC.

625 Betty Mars (Casablanca, Morocco) 1973

silver gelatin print 4.5” x 6.75” signed, titled, dated, and numbered 1/6 $2.000-3,000

624 Dr. Kool (Philadelphia)

1972 silver gelatin print 7-1/8” x 4-1/8” signed, titled, dated, and numbered 2/6 $3,000-5.000 Catalogue Note: Hendricks executed a painting of the same image.

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Berry Horton (1917-1987) Berry Horton worked as a nude model for the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1930’s, and trained at the South Side Community Art Center with many of his friends such as George and Frank Neal, William McBride, Jacob Lawrence, and William Carter. His abstract nude studies were inspired by the Artist and Model Balls held during the 1930’s and 1940’s to raise money to support the South Side Community Center.

644 Head of a Woman and Standing Nude

c. 1950 watercolor and oil sketch (respectively) 9” x 7” / 16.25” x 8” each signed $600-800

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604 Street Scene

c. 1950 watercolor on paper 7� x 17� signed $350-450

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Jerald Ieans (b. 1970)

Contemporary artist who lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. Ieans masterfully melds color, form and technique to create sensuous, yet precise, organic abstractions that recall his early interest in color-field painting and minimalism. Working in oil on canvas or wood, Ieans overlays large biomorphic shapes executed in colors that evoke personal meaning for him. Textured brushstrokes activate the composition and the forms appear to morph and shift within the confines of the strong rectangle of the support structure.

Ieans chose to bypass art school in favor of painting daily in his studio, reading about art and visiting the Saint Louis Art Museum where he studied their collection of modern and contemporary masters. By the age of twenty-five, his distinctive style garnered him the honor of being the youngest artist ever to be given a solo exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum in their Currents series. In 2001, Ieans’s paintings were seen in Thelma Gold-

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en’s Freestyle exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and in the January 2002 Artforum, Ieans was introduced by Robert Storr, Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, as a young artist who “shows special promise for the year ahead.”

His work can be found in the public collections of Barney’s New York, NY; Donald L. Bryant Jr. Family Art Trust, St. Louis, MO; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Nerman Museum, Johnson County Community College, Kansas City, KS; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; UBS Collection, Los Angeles.

Tyler Fine Art will present an exhibition and catalogue of paintings and prints by Jerald Ieans in December 2015. www.tfa-exhibits.com

630 Waves and Rococo

2008 oil on canvas wrapped panel 82� x 37� signed, titled, and dated verso $2,500-4,500

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Jerald Ieans (b. 1970)

632 Pigtailed

2012 oil on canvas wrapped panel 20� x 16� signed, titled, and dated verso $1,000-2,000

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631 Mango Mango

2012 oil on canvas wrapped panel 11� x 14� signed, titled, and dated verso $1,000-2.000

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Fred Jones (1914-2004)

Painter and printmaker, Frederick D. Jones, Jr. studied at Clark University in Atlanta and later at the Art Institute of Chicago with George Neal and Eldzier Cortor. He is best known for surrealist based figurative works and images of jazz artists.

He exhibited at the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, and in the South throughout the 1940’s. In 1943, he won the purchase award at Atlanta University. Jones worked for a time with Hale Woodruff while in Georgia.

He exhibited at Atlanta University, 1942 and 1943; Xavier University, 1963; and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1946-49 and 1951. His work can be

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found in the collections of Atlanta University and the Evans-Tibbs Collection in Washington D.C. REF: Tradition Redefined, The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, Brenda Thompson, American Negro Art, Cedric Dover.

586 Fisherman

ink on paper 24� x 5� signed lower left $400-600

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Claude Lawrence (b. 1944)

Lawrence studied music in high school and in college at Roosevelt University in the mid-1960s.

He made a living as a saxophonist after college until 1980. He was mostly self-taught, although he studied printmaking at the Printmaker’s Workshop in New York City from 1992-1993. He was living in Harlem in the late 1980s, attending gallery openings and networking. He met artists Fred Brown, Lorenzo Pace, Jack Whitten and Joe Overstreet.

Bob Blackburn recruited him to the Printmakers Workshop after meeting Lawrence at an opening. From 1990-2010, he lived in places across the country and in Mexico City. He has lived in Chicago since 2010.

In 2013, three of his paintings were accepted into the permanent collection of the Parrish Art Museum in Southhampton, NY, and in.2014, three of his paintings were accepted into the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. His work is also in the collec-

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tions of The Studio Museum in Harlem; African American Museum, Los Angeles; American Folk Art Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum; The National African American Museum, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Lawrence paints on canvas and on cold press watercolor paper.

In 2015, Gerald Peters Gallery in New York presented: Claude Lawrence: Beyond Improvisation.

Lawrence’s work has also been featured in exhibitons at Cinque Gallery, NY; East African Cultural Center, Philadelphia, PA; Montclair University, NJ; Parrish Art Museum, Southhampton, NY; Water Mill Museum, NY; Elaine Benson Gallery; East End Arts Council, Riverhead, NY; Great Neck Library, NY; Goat Alley Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY; Warren Street Gallery, Hudson, NY; Hugh Hill Gallery, Kent, CT; Works of Art Gallery, New York, NY; Museum of African-American Art, Los Angeles, CA.

622 Untitled 2001 gouache on paper 22� x 30� signed and dated $3,500-4,500

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Norman Lewis (1909-1979)

Although Norman Lewis began his career predominantly as a social realist, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with the genre’s ability to affect palpable societal change. He began to explore abstraction in the mid-1940’s, developing a personal style consisting of a cast of calligraphic figures reminiscent of pictographs. From 1946 to 1964, Lewis was represented by the Willard Gallery, where he had six solo shows and participated in two group exhibitions. Like most African American artists of the time, he straddled two worlds, one of the African American artist, the other that of the abstractionist. He co-founded the Harlem Artist’s Guild, 1935 and the Spiral Group, 1963, as well as the Cinque Gallery. He was the only African American included in the Studio 35 sessions, organized by Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline to define abstract expressionism.

The Museum of Modern Art subsequently included his work in the exhibition, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America.

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Lewis’ first retrospective exhibition was held in 1976 at the Graduate Center of City College, New York.

His work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Studio Museum in Harlem; and Whitney Museum of American Art. His work will be featured in an upcoming exhibition titled, Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis in 2015 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

In the early 1930s, Lewis studied with Augusta Savage in Harlem, and later with Raphael Soyer at the John Reed School. Soyer was a talented printmaker and figure painter. Eventually Lewis became an instructor himself at the Harlem Community Center in the late 1930s. He and his fellow teachers, Charles Alston and Ernest Critchlow produced very successful, low edition prints early in their careers. Bob Blackburn (Printers Workshop) was a student of Lewis’ here.

613 Musicians

1938 lithograph 14.2” x 11.5” signed “Norman Lewis” and initialed “OBL” (Ouida Lewis, his wife) $3,000-5,000 Another example of this edition was exhibited in Black Printmakers and the WPA, Leslie KingHammond, Lehland College Art Gallery, New York, 1989.

The current exhibit, Stone and Metal: Lithographs and Etchings by Norman Lewis (the companion exhibition to Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis) is at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art through April 3, 2016.

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Charles Lilly (B. 1949) Charles Lilly was born in 1949 and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1970, with a background in commercial art. For over thirty years he worked as an illustrator, . Recently, he turned his focus to fine art and plans to create new works for his life’s pursuit, a series he calls Black Life in America, Lilly says “It is my intention that when future African American children (or any children) and adults alike visit various museums, they will see realistic oil painted documents of us (themselves) doing what we do and being how we be, and thus knowing ‘Our’ importance in ‘This’ society”; quiet as it’s been kept.”

Lilly has painted a variety of people, places, and things, including Malcolm X in 1973, originally painted for Encore, which became the well known cov-

er of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley; Hannibal, painted for Budweiser’s Great Kings of Africa series in 1977; Crispus Attucks, painted in 1999 for Crisis Magazine/NAACP, and Mt. Freedom, painted for the cover of Dr. Molefi Kete Assante’s book African American History 2002 A Journey of Liberation, the People Publishing Group, NJ. Lilly’s work has been exhibited at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; Miami, Dade County Cultural Center Library; Hawaii Public Library; Kennedy Center, Dallas, Texas; DuSable Museum, Chicago; and Hampton University, Virginia. He was commissioned by the Langston Hughes Community Library & Cultural Center, New York in 1994 to paint Langston Hughes, which remains on permanent display at the Library.

Image Credit: Jet, December 22, 1977

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638 Paul Robeson Michael Morgan, Awadagin Pratt, and Harolyn Blackwell acrylic and airbrush on board 24” x 29” $1,000-2,000 Paul Robeson (American, 1898-1976) was a singer and actor as well as civil activist. He had lead roles in Eugene O’Neil’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The Emperor Jones; Michael Morgan (American, b. 1957) is currently the music director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony and the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra. He has held assistant conductor positions at the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Awadigan Pratt (American, b. 1966) is a concert pianist. Since 2004, he has been an assistant professor of piano and artist-in-residence at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music; Harolyn Blackwell (American, b. 1955) is a lyric coloratura soprano who has performed in many of the world’s finest opera houses. She has performed for Pope John Paul II and US President George W. Bush.

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Charles Lilly (B. 1949) 637 George Clinton

acrylic and airbrush on board 23” x 29” $1,000-2,000 George Clinton (American, b. 1941) is a musician, producer and songwriter. He is one of the foremost innovators of funk music, and was the architect of P-Funk, and the principal member of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic (1970s-80s).

639 Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins

acrylic and airbrush on illustration board 24” x 29” signed lower right $1,000-2,000 Miles Davis (American, 1926-1991) and Sonny Rollins (American, b.1930) are seminal figures in jazz music.

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641 Peabo Bryson

acrylic and airbrush on board 23” x 30” $1,000-2,000 Peabo Bryson (American, b. 1951) is an R&B and soul singer, and is well known in recent years for his performance of “Beauty and the Beast” with Celine Dion.

640 Koko Taylor, Ruth Brown, and Gertrude “Ma” Rainey acrylic and airbrush on board 24” x 29” signed lower left $1,000-2,000 Koko Taylor (American, 1928-2009) was a Chicago blues singer; Ruth Brown (American, 1928-2006) was a R&B signer and songwriter; Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (American, 18861939) was known as one of the earliest professional blues singers.

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Whitfield Lovell (b. 1959)

Whitfield Lovell was born in the Bronx in 1959.

His father’s family was originally from Barbados and his mother had been raised in the American South. While he was growing up, he assisted his father, who was an amateur photographer, in his darkroom. Lovell began his formal art training at the High School of Music and Art, NY and attended the Maryland Institute and Parsons School of Design before receiving a BFA from Cooper Union in 1981.

History and memory have been two themes permeating Lovell’s work consistently throughout his career. Working from a personal archive of vintage photographs of anonymous African Americans from the early 20th century, he creates a three dimensional tableau of thoughtfully constructed elements centered around a charcoal portrait. He is also known for his large scale installations that literally invite the viewer into the world of his subject. The most recent installation, Whispers from the Walls, created during a residency in 1999 at the University of North Texas Art Gallery, Denton, TX, featured a one room cabin built

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with salvaged materials - a vestige of the 1920’s south, with carefully arranged found objects and portraits drawn on the walls.

Lovell taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1987-2001, and has served as visiting artist in residence at Rice University, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. He has won numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 2007.

He has exhibited his work extensively and his work is found in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY: The Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC; The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, DC; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA; The Yale University Art Gallery; The Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Seattle Art Museum, WA.

588 Chance

2002 iris print with collaged playing cards 21� x 16� signed, dated and numbered 29/50 in pencil $800-1,200 Exhibitions: A separate image of Chance was shown in the Art in Embassies (AIE) program at the U.S./U.N. Embassy in 2009

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James McMillan (b. 1925) Born in Sanford, North Carolina, James C. McMillan entered Howard University in 1941, at the age of 15. There McMillan studied under Alain Locke, Loïs Mailou Jones and James Lesesne Wells. McMillan’s education was put on hold when he enlisted in the Navy in 1943. He returned to Howard three years later and graduated in 1947 earning himself a summer fellowship at the inaugural year of the Skowhegan School of Art in Maine, becoming its first African-American fellow. After three years teaching at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, McMillan left for Paris, and attended the Académie Julian in 1950-51.

McMillan returned in 1951 to complete a third tenure at Bennett; as well as complete an M.F.A. in sculpture and a doctorial advanced studio art study at Syracuse University, N.Y. In 1969, he accepted a post as a Professor and Chair of the Art Department at nearby Guilford College. McMillan was the first African-American chair of the Art Department there. He retired in 1988.

He exhibited extensively including solo and group shows at Skowhegan School of Art (1947); Smithsonian Institution Regional (1953); Corcoran Area Show, Washington, DC (1954); Guilford College (1981); Winston-Salem State University (1981); University North Carolina Charlotte (1991); 23rd Annual Competition for North Carolina Artists, Fayetteville Museum of Art (1995).

A retrospective show of the artist’s work, Loss

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and Redemption: The Art of James C. McMillan (December 10, 2009-February 21, 2010) was held at the Bakersfield Museum of Art (Bakersfield, CA). The Art of James C. McMillan: Discovering an African American Master was held at Bennett College in Greensboro, NC in 2011.

“Many African-American artists of the 20th Century have also depicted loss in their work (Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett and Jacob Lawrence, among others), but perhaps none so deftly and devastatingly right on as the North Carolinian, James C. McMillan. While the aforementioned artists veered more forcibly into art of protest, resistance and rebellion, James McMillan’s work, especially that of the 1950s and ‘60s, more clearly examined the depths of personal loss, of the deep psychological damage…

By depicting individual loss, McMillan appealed to human empathy to motivate a responsive connection of viewer to victim. Ever the humanist, McMillan looked at those individuals, white as well as black, who had fallen or been pushed off the optimistic society’s road and who could not, rather than would not, get back on. The roads had been blocked, shored up, closed off. McMillan extrapolated from his personal experiences of racial injustice to form a philosophy that encompassed opposition to all injustice. “ Robert E. Holmes, essay for the catalogue of Loss and Redemption: The Art of James C. McMillan, Bakersfield Museum of Art (Bakersfield, CA).

617 To Be Alone

1960/1961 oil on board 35.75� x 23.75� signed and dated 60 lower right titled and dated 61 on verso $10,000-20,000

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Dean Mitchell (b. 1957)

Dean Mitchell was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1957 and raised in Florida. He attended Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio, working his way through by selling his watercolors. After graduation, Mitchell worked at Hallmark Cards until he decided to paint full time. Although he initially found it difficult to find gallery representation, he has since won numerous awards and had his work exhibited extensively. He is well known for his figurative works, landscapes, and still lifes that evoke Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.

His inclusion in the 2002 exhibition entitled, Black Romantic, at the Studio Museum in Harlem led Michael Kimmelman, art critic of the New York Times to call his works, “subtly tuned character studies with an eye toward abstract form and charismatic light. Mr. Mitchell is a virtual modern-day Vermeer of ordinary black people given dignity through the eloquence of his concentration and touch.� Mitchell is primarily focused on capturing his immediate surroundings and conveying a sense of intimacy between the viewer

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and his subject. He has felt especially drawn to the city of New Orleans, where he has painted the city streets and the musicians that populate them.

His work has been featured in exhibitions at the American Jazz Museum, Kansas City, MO; Gadsden Art Center, Quincy, FL; Canton Museum of Art, OH; Mississippi Art Museum, Jackson; and the Cornell Museum of Art and American Culture, FL. It may also be found in the permanent collections of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi; Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Beach Museum of Art, Manhattan, Kansas; The Autry National Center, Los Angeles; The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas; Gadsden Art Center Quincy, Florida; Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio and the Library of Congress.

606 Portfolio of six color etchings by The Limited Editions Club 2003 19.5” x 22.25” (sheet size)

This portfolio contains title page, colophon, and six color etchings printed by hand on somerset paper by Peter Pettengill at Wingate Studio in Hinsdale, New Hampshire and laid in a cloth covered case. each signed and numbered by the artist, 10/75 $3,000-5,000

Privation

The Drums come in On the beat of one To lift my soul . . .

The cry of lonely in a crowded room midnight waiting for me each day at noon happiness so fickle coming late, leaving soon The six etchings offered in this auction were created to accompany Maya Angelou’s, Music, Deep Rivers in My Soul.

Mitchell writes, “Maya Angelou wrenches her poetry from her heart and sets it free to sing the pain and the joy, not of one heart, but of humanity. This is her jazz.”

A different version of this collaboration includes text and a cd by Wynton Marsalis.

Blue Angel 69

Dean Mitchell (b. 1957)

Bathed in Light

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Harmony

E. Plurbus Unum

Hot in the Shade

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Keith Morrison (b. 1942)

Referred to by his biographer as a “painterly storyteller”, Keith Morrison is not only a highly accomplished artist, but curator, art critic and educator as well. Born in Jamaica, Morrison’s formal art training was at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received both a B.A. and an M.F.A. Morrison’s art has been widely exhibited across the U.S and worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Smithsonian Institution; Anacostia Museum, Washington D. C.; Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.; and the California Afro-American Museum, Los Angeles. He represented Jamaica as an artist in the 2001 Venice Biennale, and served as U.S. critic to the 2008 Shanghai Biennale. He exhibited at the Southside Art Center (Chicago) in 1975.

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His works are held in the collections of numerous public institutions including, the Cincinnati Art Museum , the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum , the Museum of Modern Art of Monterrey, Mexico, and the National Gallery of Art, Jamaica.

Morrison has held faculty and administrative appointments at a number of distinguished universities and art schools, including DePaul University, University of Illinois, Chicago, Fisk University, TN, (1967-68) and dean of the Tyler School of Art at Temple University .

592 Mid Morning Coffee with Cheese and Plant 1973 etching 16� x 24� signed and dated, numbered 6/35 $1,500-2,500

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Gus Nall (1919-1995)

Gus Nall studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris. Fellow Chicagoans, Eldzier Cortor and Archibald Motley particularly influenced him. He was featured in Art Gallery Magazine (1968, “The Afro-American Issue”), Fine Arts & the Black American (Indiana University), as well as Carol Myers’ Black Power in the Arts. His work, Lincoln Speaks to Freedmen on the Steps of the Capital at Richmond, is in the collection of the DuSable Museum of African-American History.

REF: Afro-American Artists, A Bio-bibliography Directory, Cedarholm, 1973.

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623 Untitled

c. 1950 oil on canvas 36” x 36” signed $1,000-2,000

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Hayward Oubre (1916-2006)

Hayward Oubre’s art was met with critical success from the time he graduated Dillard University in New Orleans, as its first fine art major in 1939, throughout his long career as an artist and teacher, his repeated award-winning participation in the ever-important Atlanta (University) Annuals, to most recently, with its inclusion in the museum exhibition, Tradition Redefined:The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art. Oubre was a talented painter, printmaker and sculptor, trained by two of the best: Hale Woodruff and Elizabeth Prophet. He won numerous awards for his work in all mediums.

Oubre was also a dedicated life-long educator, holding positions at Florida A & M University, followed by Alabama State College and finally Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, retiring in 1981.

Perhaps it was what Oubre didn’t do—what he refused to do—that was his greatest contribution.

He didn’t automatically accept the standard: he developed a concise study of color mixing and color relationships that challenged the long-standing “color triangle” developed by Johann Wolfgang Goethe; he rejected the popular trends and the en-

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tries submitted for art exhibitions, calling for a higher standard and more innovative and challenging approach—and devised a technique of making sculptures from twisting common coat hangers without the use of welds or solder. Regarded as the “master of stabile”, his work was often compared to Alexander Calder.

Oubre’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; High Museum of Art, GA; Jacksonville Art Museum, FL; Minnesota Museum of Art, MN; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Atlanta University Annuals, GA; University of Iowa, IA; Winston-Salem State University, NC; Greenville County Museum of Art, NC; Lincoln University, Jefferson City, MO; Alabama State College; Woodmere Art Museum, PA; University of Delaware; Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art, Brooklyn, NY; Newark Museum, NJ; and Southern Illinois University, IL. For more information on Hayward Oubre, please visit Hayward Oubre: Works on Paper Paintings, Sculpture

596 Untitled(Standing Woman) c. 1955 carved wood 29.4” x 9.4” x 6.5” signed $16,000-18,000 Provenance: the estate of the artist

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Hayward Oubre (1916-2006)

598 Pondering

1955 plaster 20.5” x 12” x 13” signed and dated $15,000-17,000 Provenance: the estate of the artist Exhibitions: Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, and Prints by Negro Artists, Atlanta University (Annuals) 1955.

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597 Entanglement

1963 graphite on paper 20” x 16.5” labels verso $6,000-8,000 Provenance: the estate of the artist, Greenville County Museum of Art, North Carolina; From Difficult to Impossible, Deborah Force Fine Art, New York.

Catalogue Note: Entanglement was a subject manifested by Oubre in various mediums: graphite, etching, and wire sculpture. The etching was used by Scribner in 2004 for the cover art of the paperback version of Charles Johnson’s book, Oxherding Tale. Oubre said the subject depicted the struggle with racism, represented by the white snake

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Hayward Oubre (1916-2006)

Houston Chandler (American, b.

1914), Gorilla, c. 1946, collection of St. Louis Art Museum

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Oubre, University of Iowa

NCA Conference, Lincoln University, Missouri, 1954

615 Eternal Woman c. 1956 plaster 30” x 9.4”x 8.4” $16,000-18,000 Provenance: the estate of the artist Exhibitions: Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, and Prints by Negro Artists, Atlanta University Annuals, 1957

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Carl Pope (b. 1961) Carl Pope’s artistic practice is committed to the idea of art as a catalyst for individual and collective transformation. His photographic and multi media investigations of the socio-economic landscape of Indianapolis earned critical acclaim at prestigious venues like the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. The installation The Black Community: An Ailing Body received support from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1993.

Pope frequently works in large-scale public art and collaborates with communities and cities to stimulate public dialogue and revitalization. He expanded his public art practice with projects in Hartford, Ct, Atlanta and New York for Black Male at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1996, Pope produced Palimpsest, a video/writing project. Palimpsest, commissioned by the Wadsworth Athenaeum with grants from the Warhol and Lannan foundations, was included in the Whitney Biennial 2000 exhibition.

Pope’s most recent installation of letterpress posters called The Bad Air Smelled of Roses explores the concept of Phenomenology as seen in the writings of Martin Heidigger, a German philosopher of the early 20th century. Pope uses the medium of letterpress posters because they represent a presumptuous idea--they seem official. People look at the printed posters as a source of information and even direction. What Pope offers, however, is misdirection, so the view-

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er is required to reconsider. Another artist who explores phenomenology in a similar fashion is Shepard Fairey, with his OBEY THE GIANT propaganda campaign. Fairey created a fictional, but official-looking image, presented via stickers and graffiti pasters, in an attempt to unbalance the viewer and provoke reflection. Most of Pope’s subject matter, or what he might be inclined to call, “anti-subject matter” is concerned with his identity as an African American. Borrowing from the writings of Alain Locke (The New Negro, 1925) and Hubert Harrison (The Voice) and his “New Negro Movement”, Pope questions the role and identity of the African American today.

He accomplishes this, not by offering solutions or pre-supposed identities, but by questioning everything and being provocative---and then as Heidigger explained the usefulness of Phenomenology, “letting things manifest themselves”.

Some people might find several of the messages offensive, but Pope challenges them to question the very perspective from which that reaction emanates.

619 Lot of four letterpress posters

2005-2006 sizes range from 26” x 17” to 19” x 14” all signed in pen by the artist $1,000-1,500 Exhibitions: The Bad Air Smelled of Roses, Pope’s ongoing essay which began as a solo exhibit at Momenta Art, New York City, 2006 Occupational Therapy, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO, 2015 83

Charles Ethan Porter (1874-1923)

One of the finest painters of fruit and floral still life compositions in America during the nineteenth century, Charles Ethan Porter, was the first African American admitted into the National Academy of Design in New York. Porter also studied at L’École des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, 1881, where he began exploring Impressionism and landscape painting.

Until the very end of his career, Porter had been able to support himself with his earnings as an artist. However, according to the Hartford Black History Project, Porter shared a studio in Rockville, Connecticut with Bavarian artist Gustave Hoffman, who sold Porter’s paintings door-to-door because people would not buy art from a black artist. Porter died poor and in relative obscurity.

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In 1987, Connecticut Gallery organized a retrospective which secured Porter’s rightful place into the history of American art. A traveling retrospective of Charles Ethan Porter’s work was organized by Hildegard Cummings and the New Britain Museum of American Art in 2008 (a copy of this catalog accompanies the lot).

Charles Ethan Porter, African-American Master of Still Life, New Britain Museum of American Art, Hildegard Cummings, 2007. (full page illustration, p. 59).

601 Roses

watercolor on paper 11� x 29� signed lower right $2,000-3,000

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Edward Lyons Pryce (1914-2007) Pryce was an artist and landscape architect, probably best-known for his work at Tuskegee University, where he worked from 1948-1977. Pryce was born in Louisiana, but his father moved his wife and eight children to Los Angeles in order to have them attend public schools (prohibited in Louisiana at the time). Edward entered the pre-medicine program at UCLA in 1932, and was one of only five black students. A year and a half into the program, he switched to horticulture, and at the encouragement of an acquaintance, left to study with Dr. George Washington Carver at Tuskegee, Alabama. Pryce earned a B.S. in agriculture from Tuskegee in 1937, and became increasingly interested in landscape architecture. He eventually earned a second B.S. in landscape architecture from Ohio State University, and a master of landscape architecture degree from UC Berkeley in 1953. He was elected a fellow in the American Society of Landscape Archi-

tecture in 1984—the first, white or black, from Alabama. After his retirement as a landscape architect, he focused on painting and bas-relief sculptures. He executed a mural and copper bas reliefs in the Tuskegee Chapel. He also executed works for the Booker T. Washington High School and the Hollis Burke Frissell Library (both in Tuskegee).

Catalogue Note: Edward’s daughter, Marilyn (born in 1941) met Skunder Boghossian while in Paris and the two were married (in Tuskegee, 1966). Pryce was influenced by his son-in-law’s style of art. Marilyn and Boghossian were divorced in 1970.

Image Credit: Alabama Arts, Vol. XXI, Number 2; Art Trails in Alabama Public Art , 2005.

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645 Compassionate Spirit and The Holy Family

1996 copper relief (repoussé) lot of two works en suite 17” x 11” and 20” x 16” each signed, titled and dated $1,000-2,000

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Betye Saar (b. 1926)

Saar was born in Los Angeles, and moved with her family to Pasadena in the early 1930s. She first studied design at Pasadena City College and interior design at UCLA. This strong design-centered background would prove to be highly influential in her mature work in fine art. She was close friends with two other L.A. artists, Curtis Tann and William Pajaud. Saar and Tann actually started an enamel design business which was featured in Ebony in 1951. After graduating, from the late 50s through the mid-1960s, Saar was primarily interested in print-making, producing color etchings and intaglio prints. During the turmoil of the 1960s, the Watts riots, the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. , Saar’s work began to shift to collage and assemblage, reclaiming and repurposing personal objects she inherited as well as negatively-charged objects she found at LA flea markets. She believed that a universality of international culture could be connected by reclaiming objects and artifacts from other cultures to be used in her own constructs of perspective.

She also attended a retrospective exhibit of Joseph Cornell at the Pasadena Art

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Museum in 1967. Saar comments: “There has been an apparent thread in my art that weaves from my early prints of the 1960s through later collages and assemblages and ties into the current installations.”

“I am intrigued with combining the remnants of memories, fragments of relics, and ordinary objects with the component of technology. It’s a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously. The art itself becomes the bridge.” (REF: The St James Guide to Black Artists , p. 464, essay by Jontyle Theresa Robinson).

Saar exhibited extensively throughout the 1970s and on, including: Whitney Museum, Wadsworth Athenaeum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, MOCA, Los Angeles, University of Connecticut, Hartford, Santa Monica Museum of Art, National Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), Fresno Center and Museum, etc. Her work is in numerous important public and private collections.

611 Bookmarks in the Pages of Life (print portfolio from The Limited Editions Club) 2000 color serigraph 14.5� x 11.5� (sheet size)

This portfolio contains title page, colophon, and six color serigraphs, originally created to accompany a collection of short stories written

by Zora Neale Hurston; The portfolio was editioned at Drexel Press on Fabriano Rosapina paper and laid in a silk clamshell box with a gilt-lettered leather label on the front. each signed and numbered, 70/75 $6,000-8,000

The Bone of Contention

The Conscience of the Court

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Betye Saar (b. 1926)

Now You Cookin’ with Gas

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Magnolia Flower

High John De Conquer

Mother Catherine

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Charles Sebree (1914-1985)

Charles Sebree was born and raised in Kentucky until, at the age of ten, he and his mother became part of the Great Migration north to Chicago. By the age of 14 he was carving out his own rough existence in the midst of the Great Depression. At this time, the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago featured his drawing, Seated Boy on the cover of their magazine. He went on to train formally at the Chicago School of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago and used his interests in European modernism and African sculpture to forge his own individual style; one which evoked a mystical quality similar to old world Byzantine enamels and Russian icon paintings.

Between 1936 and 1938 he worked for the WPA

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easel division, participated in the South Side Community Arts Center, and was involved with the Cube Theater. Sebree maintained a strong interest in the theater due to his friendship with Katherine Dunham. Guided by her influence, he explored set and costume design, theatrical production, writing, and dance, while continuing to paint. Sebree ran with a group of bohemian artists from Chicago and Wisconsin, which included Magic Realist painters Gertrude Abercrombie, John Pratt, John Wilde, Karl Priebe, and others.

His work is found in many prominent collections including Howard University, the Smithsonian Institute, the St. Louis Art Museum, and the University of Chicago.

591 Saltimbanque

gouache and mixed media 8” x 10” signed lower left $1,500-2,500

620 Portrait of a Man

c. 1950 gouache and paper on board 15” x 10.5” signed $1,500-2,500

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Albert Alexander Smith (1896-1940) Painter and printmaker whose style varied from straight forward portraits and European scenes, to lively depictions of the African American community and examinations of the social injustice found therein. Albert Alexander Smith was born in 1896 in New York City, the only child of immigrants from Bermuda. After graduating from traditional high school, he began studying art with Irene Weir in 1913 at the Arts High School of the Ethical Culture School. He was the first African American to receive the Wolfe scholarship for his studies. In 1915, Smith became the first African American student admitted to the National Academy of Art and Design where he studied painting with Douglas Volk, mural painting with Kenyon Cox, and printmaking with William Auerbach-Levy. Smith was probably the first African American to use the etching press.

While attending school, Smith was the recipient of numerous awards and had his first illustration published in The Crisis. Upon his return to the academy, after serving in WWI, he received the John Armstrong Chaloner Paris Foundation first prize for painting from life as well as a first prize for etching.

In 1920, Smith moved to Europe, where he remained for the rest of his life, supporting his artistic endeavors by working as a cabaret musician at night. His work was continually shown in both the United States and Europe, and many of his illustrations appeared in both The Crisis and Opportunity. He worked closely with Arthur Schomburg of the New York Public Library, executing a series of etchings of great Black leaders which were shown at the library, as well as finding rare books on black culture he found in Europe for Schomburg to include in his collection. His draw94

ing, Plantation Melodies earned a gold medal at the Tanner Art League in Washington D.C. in 1922.

Between 1928 and 1933, the Harmon Foundation in New York showed two dozen of his works and awarded him a bronze medal in 1929.

Smith continued to exhibit every year of the American Artists Professional League in Paris between 1935 and 1938. In 1939, his work was included in the Contemporary Negro Art Exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. His work is found in the collections of the Harmon Foundation, the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Collection, and the National Archives.

In the book, New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934, Theresa Meininger-Miller discusses Smith’s etching, Plantation Melodies , dating from 1920: “In 1920, Smith’s work shifted from the world of allegory to the world of African Americans in the South. Plantation Melodies depicts a group of people enjoying music at dusk in front of a log cabin.” She continues, “It is not clear why Smith chose this subject matter. There is no evidence that he ever traveled to the South, although he may have done so briefly during his military training.” She later mentions two other works addressing southern subjects from the same year: “Smith also produced horrifying images of the American South. Two pen-and-ink drawings appeared in Crisis in 1920.” These images address atrocities against southern blacks. The painting presented here seems to be from a slightly later date, closer to 1930. Meininger-Miller writes, “Curiously, few of Smith’s works with musical imagery deal directly with his life in France.” Around this

time, Smith had gotten a banjo, taught himself to play it, and joined a band. He executed several works in the early 1930s featuring people playing the banjo and the guitar, but as Meininger-Miller points out, “These images, however, are from from the sophisticated nightclubs where Smith earned his bread and butter dressed in a tuxedo.” She believed that Smith made works that would appeal to a local, and primarily white audience. He was conflicted about his fellow African American painters’ successes in the U.S., especially those involving monetary rewards. This work is less concerned about rendering an accurate depiction of an actual scene of which Smith was familiar, and more about a theatrical presentation which included (partial) content that interested him personally and would be received positively by his clientele. Meininger-Miller concludes her chapter about Smith with, “while Smith mingled with few African Americans in France and spoke disparagingly of his compatriots, privately he gloried in their shared racial ancestry and ironically subverted elements associated with racism in his music, art and language.”

614 Southern Scene at Night c. 1930 oil on canvas 25” x 30” signed

$10,000-15,000

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Vince Smith (b. 1967)

Vince Smith’s constructions are created from found-objects, with paint applied to add color, texture, and emphasis. There is often symbolic purpose in the objects Smith selects for his constructions. Some objects, from the earlier part of this century, stereotype African Americans. Other constructions are of a more abstract form using objects which are not as readily recognizable.

Smith’s paintings are layered and textured, with incised lines and built-up surfaces. Although most use the human figure as subject matter, some, like his constructions, are more abstract. States Smith, “I make stuff. I find, paint and carve things.

I like to ‘fool the eye’ into enjoying the different feelings provided by each of the surfaces in my work. I enjoy ‘deep’ paintings -- not deep mentally as much as rich, offering a lot to look at, paintings that reveal different things every time one views them.”

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Vince Smith holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, with a concentration in painting and printmaking, and a BFA from Millikin University. In 1994, Smith received an honorable mention from the WESTAF/NEA Regional Fellowships for Visual Artists, and in 1993 he received the Carey Orness Award in Sculpture and an Art Saint Louis Honor Award solo exhibition. He currently lives in Chicago.

649 Oh Come All Ye Children

1993 assemblage, acrylic on found objects 31” x 26.5” x 9.5” $2,000-3,000 Exhibitions: Vince Smith: Recent Constructions & Paintings, January -March, 1996. Tarble Arts Center (Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois). This image is featured on the cover of the exhibition pamphlet, a copy of which accompanies the lot.

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Frank Stewart (b.1949 ) Frank Stewart was born in Nashville, Tennessee and grew up in Memphis and Chicago. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago. Very early on, he became fascinated with the work of the renowned photographer Roy DeCarava and was drawn to New York City. “I moved to New York City to study with him and ended up at Cooper-Union where he was teaching. I studied with him for a year, but then he left for Hunter College. He taught a whole philosophy about how to approach a subject honestly and tell the truth. I hope I got some of that.” Stewart stayed at Cooper-Union where he was able to study with some of the greats of 20th century photography, include Garry Winogrand, Stephen Shore and Joel Meyeritz. Stewart received a B.F.A from Cooper-Union and began his career as a professional photographer.

He has a deep affinity for jazz that was instilled in him at an early age. “I’m culturally motivated.

Jazz comes from African-American culture, which is a true American culture, because African-Americans had to create it here themselves. I’ve been back to Africa and traced the roots of this music culturally and historically to the Caribbean and New Orleans. Yes, jazz is a cultural experience.”

Stewart’s work reflects that deep respect for African-American history and culture. Among his books are: Romare Bearden; The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family (with poems by Ntozake Shange); Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country; and Sweet Swing Blues on the Road,

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a book of intimate images of Wynton Marsalis and his group on the road, with accompanying text from Marsalis.

Stewart has had numerous solo and group shows at Cooper Union Gallery, Washington Project for the Arts, Studio Museum in Harlem, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the International Center of Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. Stewart was a member of the first team of North American journalists invited by the government of Cuba to photograph there in 1977; he was also invited by the Los Angeles Committee to photograph the 1984 Olympics. He has been granted two photographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a New York Creative Artists Public Service Award, and a 2002 NYFA fellowship. He was honored as Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1975, at Kenkeleba House in 1987, and at the Light Work Gallery at Syracuse University in 1989.

He currently serves as Senior Staff Photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center. His most recent exhibition, The Changing Face of Jazz , was shown at Leica Gallery New York SoHo through January 4, 2015.

634 Rumba Street, Cuba 2002 silver print 12.5” x 8.5”

$1,000-2,000

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Suesan Stovall (b. 1963 )

Stovall was born in 1963 to Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Hunter-Gault is an American journalist and former foreign correspondent for NPR. She was also one of the first two African American students to enroll at the University of Georgia, graduating the year Suesan was born. Suesan attended the (High) School of Performing Arts in NYC and then studied theater and economics at Sarah Lawrence College. In an interview accompanying the exhibit, Journey of My Soul, Come Along for the Ride, at the Neil and Angelica Rudenstine Gallery of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, 2008, she discussed how she transformed into a visual artist creating magnet collage pieces for fast cash.

She was inspired by the work of Romare Bearden as a young adult, and after a time, her work became increasingly complex, and ultimately serious as she became a full-time artist. Stovall visited Jamaica and spoke with Rastafari about inspiration and spiritualism, and eventually when her parents moved to South Africa, she went there

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and spent time with sangomas (traditional healers), learning about ancestor worship and healing practices.

“There are bands of energy that are infinite,” she says, “and they bring gifts with them; gifts of moments, of people, and of experiences.” Her artwork often includes collages of written words, image and phrases, along with photos, often old images of African-Americans. (Jeffery McNary, 2008. for entire essay: https://www.goodreads. com/story/show/35319-ms-stovall-s-canticles) Stovall’s work has a historical context and she approaches the creative process as would an actor developing a character. The collage or assemblage becomes a snapshot of the subject’s energy, and is “useful” to the viewer in that it is inspirational. She has exhibited her work at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Tubman Museum of African American Art, History and Culture (Macon, GA).

602 Four and Blessed Assembly 1999 lot of two assemblages 12” x 11” and 8” x 7” signed and dated verso $1,000-2,000

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Thelma Johnson Streat (1912-1959) Thelma Johnson Streat was a multi-talented painter and dancer who focused her career on promoting ideas of multi-culturalism and raising the social awareness of inequalities among the lines of gender and race.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Streat worked with the WPA executing murals in San Francisco.

She worked closely with Diego Rivera on the Art in Action mural in 1940. She continued to use the genre of murals to address social inequality toward African Americans in the early 1940s, after she arrived in Chicago. By the mid-1940s, her style became increasingly abstract, taking

on a neo-primitivist feel, appropriating symbolism from many diverse cultures in an effort to communicate more universally. This turn in style has caused her work to be associated (in retrospect) with the Abstract Expressionists of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1946, Streat added another dimension to her work: dance. Her multi-dimensional performances and exhibits were the first of their kind, with Streat performing modern dance movements in front of paintings she had done that were thematically associated.

Streat did at least three nearly identical versions of Kings. Judy Bullington, in her essay, Thelma Johnson Streat and Cultural Synthesis on the West Coast, writes “The undercurrent of African themes in Streat’s work is evident in paintings like Two Kings ...using superimposed profiles of black pharaonic figures with frontal eyes in the style of ancient Egyptian art. One aspect of African American religious practices, the singing of spirituals, also featured strongly in Streat’s performances.”

584 Kings

1941 oil on board 13” x 10” $2,000-3,000

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Many well-known negro spirituals (O Mary Don’t You Weep, Don’t You Mourn, Didn’t Old Pharaoh Get Lost, and Turn Back Pharoah’s Army) tell the moral lesson of the Pharoah’s failure: “Didn’t old Pharoah get los’ in the Red Sea?” Streat uses this symbol as a warning to African Americans not to lose sight of the idea of equality and true freedom. Pharaohs of any color will fall--whether in the face of God, or by the hands of the people they oppress.

585 Executive Order #8802 (Study)

For more information on Thelma Johnson Streat, please visit our web catalog at Thelma Johnson Streat: Faith in an Ultimate Freedom

c. 1941 oil on board signed 21” x 27.5” $2,000-3,000

Streat addresses the subject of Executive Order 8802, employing it as a standard in her campaign for equal opportunity in labor for African Americans. The technique of backlighting the heads of figures creates an interesting halo effect. Streat distinguishes between the white figures who are either helpful or sympathetic to the black figures and the white “overseers” who are seen as overly large and threatening. The mural study is direct and narrative. She purposely drew the figures in a cartoonish way (and called these studies “cartoons”). That style allows her to address several things at once without a need for a literal composition. The vignettes include commentary on the issues of separate barracks, the denial of blood donation by African Americans, separate seating in restaurants, and denial of equal opportunity in the workplace. Executive Order 8802, enacted

by President Roosevelt in 1941, prohibited racial discrimination in the military industry. It eventually led to progress in equal opportunity in the workplace and was not restricted to only the war industry.

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Freddie Styles (b. 1944 )

The ritual of rural living that requires a dependence on nature and the surrounding for subsistence had a profound effect on Freddie Styles, and continues to influence his painting. Flashes of nature appear in abstraction, expressed in new and innovative ways. For his Roots series, he substituted azalea roots for the traditional paintbrush. In other works he is known to press multiple sheets of crumpled fax paper with metallic inks onto a gessoed paper surface.

Freddie Styles is a graduate of Morris Brown College and lives in Atlanta. He has served as an artist-in-residence at Clark Atlanta University, Clayton State University, and Spelman College.

He was the Director of City Gallery East in Atlanta, GA from 2003-2008. Styles has received several purchase awards from the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. In 2001, he was awarded a King Baudouin Foundation Cultural Exchange Program grant through the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta to work and study in Belgium.

Museum group exhibitions include the High Museum in Atlanta, GA, and the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, GA.

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His work is found in the collections of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, The Paul Jones Collection, State of Georgia Art Collection, King and Spalding LLP, Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia.

His work was featured in Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art, Brenda Thompson. Thompson writes, “In Working Roots Series, Styles drenched root stems with pigment to apply layers of color on the surface of the painting, creating a work both literally and figuratively rooted in nature.” She also mentions that Styles was an award-winning horticulturalist. Styles began his Working Roots Series in the late 1980s, but later Styles explained the transition into his most recent methods: “Over the years I got better at growing azaleas which limited the availability of azalea roots. After a brief period of experimenting with applying paint with bamboo branches…I started using pine needles.”

650 Lot of two works (diptych) from the Silver Trees Revisited Series 2014 acrylic on canvas signed and dated lower right 12” x 24” (each) $1,000-2,000

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Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1859 to a prominent middle class family. His father was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and despite his initial misgivings, he supported his son’s education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Tanner found an early mentor in Thomas Eakins, whose influence is seen in Tanner’s work throughout his career. Upon graduation, Tanner eked out a living by opening a photography studio and teaching at Clark College.

In 1891, Tanner left to study and teach in Paris.

He attended Academie Julian and studied under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. It was here that he was able to develop his personal style, free from the prejudice found in the United States. Early in his career, he painted genre scenes of African American life which portrayed the dignity of his subjects despite poverty and prejudice. One of his most famous paintings from this period, The Banjo Lesson, demonstrated this intention of breaking the stereotypical caricature mold with its depiction of an older African American male teaching a young boy how to play the banjo, an instrument that had become an object of derision.

Despite the rise of modernism, he remained painting in a firmly academic manner and focused entirely on religious subjects for the rest

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of his career. A trip to North Africa and the Holy Land later in his career brought about a mystical quality in his work that furthered his personal style while remaining true to his unwavering academicism. His paintings were shown regularly in the salons in Paris - his painting Resurrection of Lazarus won the Third Class Medal at the Salons des Artistes, Francais, 1897- as well as stateside.

Tanner became the mentor for early 20th century African American artists who made pilgrimages to France to study and paint. In 1927, he was inducted into the National Academy of Design.

His work has been shown in exhibitions at the Philadelphia Art Club; New York Public Library; Vose Galleries, Boston, MA; National Arts Clubs Galleries, NY; Corcoran Gallery Biennial; Century of Progress, Chicago; Philadelphia Art Alliance; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1969, a traveling retrospective of over 80 of Tanner’s paintings, drawings, and studies was held by the Frederick Douglass Institute and the National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington D.C. His work is found in the collections of Atlanta High Museum of Art, GA; Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Collection; Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; and the White House Collection.

Dewey F. Mosby, director emeritus of Colgate’s Picker Art Gallery and author of Henry Ossawa Tanner (1839-1937), wrote this concerning Virgin Mary in Meditation : “the handling, with its vertical brushstrokes and touches of impasto highlights calls to mind Christ at the Home of Martha and Mary especially in the table cloth and background. The treatment of (Virgin) Mary in Meditation calls to mind the earlier Thankful Poor….the pious attitude here is not too far removed from..

The Savior. The subtle halo above the head of the pious woman , who seems to be in meditation, suggests the figure is the Virgin Mary. This notion is not mere speculation. We know that beginning around 1900, and continuing until his last works in the 1930s, Tanner painted and drew numerous images of the Virgin Mary.” Mosby suggests that the possible model for the picture is Mrs. Atherton Curtis, which seems likely. Atherton and Louise Curtis were friends and patrons, and Tanner and his wife, Jessie, had spent the autumn of 1902 with the Curtises in Mount Kisco, NY. Tanner painted Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Atherton Curtis with Still Life (n.d.) which is in the collection of the Smithsonian.

It was not unusual for Tanner to appropriate his acquaintances as models—this composition is later seen in a sketch for Christ at the Home of Lazarus (collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

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Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)

627 Virgin Mary in Meditation

c. 1905 oil on board 12� X 9.5� signed lower right, H. O. Tanner $80,000-120,000 Provenance: Private collection, Paris to a private dealer, New York. This work is accompanied by a copy of a letter from Dewey F. Mosby, PhD, confirming authenticity and offering further scholarship of the work.

Exhibitions: Museum of Biblical Art, New York, New York, 2013-2014, circulating exhibition: Ashe to Amen: African Americans and Biblical Imagery, p.

47, Cat. No. 5 illus., exhibition traveled to: Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, Baltimore, Maryland; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee.

Catalogue Note: Housed in an outstanding period Foster Brothers Marshall Field frame.

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Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) It is interesting that Tanner, who was openly critical at times regarding the popularity of impressionist and post-impressionist works, and who mostly shunned American modernists, would choose to approach a preliminary sketch in this manner. It is arguable that the practical definition of “sketch” is even inappropriate in describing this painting. Tanner’s concern in this work is clearly more about light and color and less about composition or drawing. American modernists throughout the 20th century used “sketches” in this way, but this would be atypical of a 19th century academic painter, who would more likely make preliminary drawings and possibly paint detailed vignettes of components of a future, larger work. Frankly, this painting, with it’s broad brushwork and brighter palette, has little to do with the larger Christ at the Home of Martha and Mary , aside from sharing the same subject. Tanner hardly needed to work out the composition for a subject that had been painted for centuries, and the figures are reversed in the larger work anyway (curiously, the figures are also reversed in a “sketch” for Christ and Nicodemus , 1923). The palette of the larger version of Christ at the Home of Martha and Mary is warm and somber, while this work is bathed in light, and the blue-green color so prevalent in his works to come a decade later is seen on the right, behind the two women. Perhaps it is more accurate to see this work standing on its own, but as a private exercise by the artist—one

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in which he experiments with modern brushwork and palette. Tanner had visited North Africa not long before he executed this work, and discovered a light quality like he had never seen in France. As a realist, he would have understood, and witnessed firsthand, that this type of sunlight would physically affect your natural vision. White would penetrate everything, and your eye’s ability to define details would be greatly hindered. The publicly recognized transition of his style and palette would not come for years, but it is completely conceivable that he began working these concerns out privately by 1904. Tanner challenged himself and other artists: “It has very often seemed to me that many painters of religious subjects forget that their pictures should be as much works of art as are other paintings with less holy subjects.” Unreflective execution of an elevated subject would not suffice. Eventually, Tanner learned himself that by personalizing his spiritualism and his artwork that represented it, he did not abandon his sense of reverence, but in fact, increased it. Lizzeta LeFalle-Collins wrote, “He moved from the academic style he had learned under Eakins to a style that not only reflected his Christian beliefs but also substituted mysteriously vague shapes for what had formerly been defined figures, causing the works to transcend the text of the Bible and become mystical.”

599

Study for Christ at the Home of Martha and Mary 1905 oil on panel signed with estate stamp / also signed by artist’s son, Jesse O. Tanner in ink 7.75” x 9” $20,000-30,000 Provenance: the estate of the artist, Grand Central Art Galleries Exhibitions: Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston, Massachusetts; Afro-American Artists in Paris, 1919-1939, The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, Hunter College, New York, November 8 - December 22, 1989.

Catalogue Note: The final version of Christ at the Home of Martha and Mary is in the permanent collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA.

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Bob Thompson (1937- 1966) Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937, Bob Thompson studied art at the University of Louisville and Boston University before moving to New York in 1959. Between 1961 and 1966, he traveled the European continent, immersing himself in museums and painting. He produced approximately 1000 paintings and drawings in a career cut short by his untimely death in Rome.

His first solo exhibition was held at the Delancey Street Gallery, NY in 1960. From there he exhibited widely, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Dayton Art Institute, and the Martha Jackson

Gallery, NY. In 1998, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a major traveling retrospective of his work featuring over 100 of his paintings.

Thompson’s work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Dayton Art Institute, Denver Art Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. REF: Bob Thompson, Thelma Golden (catalog for the exhibition at The Whitney Museum of Art, 1998)

This preliminary ink sketch for Untitled (Entombment), dated the same year, retains the perforations on the left edge from being torn from a spiral notebook.

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628 Untitled (Entombment)

1961 oil on board 27.5” x 40.75” signed and dated signed and inscribed, “Paris” verso $60,000-80,000 Exhibitions: PAPER BAND, curated by Stephanie Buhmann, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York, July 11-August 24, 2012.

This untitled work by Thompson was executed in 1961, his first year in Paris. “Fascinated by traditional European painting since his University of Louisville days (an interest further inspired by Dody Müller’s advice early on to seek inspiration in the Old Masters).

Bob Thompson now studied the Old Masters firsthand. Years later, critic Barbara Rose would report that she “used to run into him in the Louvre, where he went almost daily to sketch.” (Bob Thompson, Thelma Golden, 2001; catalog to accompany the exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art). According to his friend and neighbor in Glaciére, painter Robert DeNiro, Thompson was “very enterprising” and “always running around looking at art”. (ibid)

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Bob Thompson (1937- 1966)

Thompson painted The Deposition the same year (collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art). The label reads, “It was at this time that the artist began to create religious scenes based on Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings he saw at the Musée du Louvre. Inspired by the vibrant works of Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse, Thompson reinvented the Louvre paintings with vivid colors, flat shapes, and limited anatomical detail. Thompson linked 114

his appropriation of traditional imagery to the methods of jazz musicians, who constantly reinvent musical compositions through spontaneous improvisation.” If you compare Thompson’s The Deposition, with Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet’s Descent from the Cross, which Thompson would have seen at the Louvre, there are obvious reinventions of the traditional subject.

Similarly, if you look at Titian’s The Entombment of Christ (also at the Louvre) and Thompson’s untitled picture of the same subject, there are similarities and differences. Many of the central figures are present: Joseph of Arimathea, Saint John, and Nicodemus carry the body while the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene are nearby.

Thompson has made some additions, including a large red rectangular object running diagonally off the upper left corner of the picture. One conjecture is that this is the Stone of Unction, a reddish, rectangular stone upon which Christ’s body was placed by Joseph for preparation for burial.

Thompson has included horses, as he did in The Deposition. The identity of the figure standing to the far left is unclear, but in Quarton’s Pietá of Villeneuve-les-Avignon (1455), which also hangs at the Louvre, the artist has taken the liberty to add Jean de Montagnac, the artist’s patron, dressed in church canon. This improvisation, over 500 years earlier, would hardly have gone unnoticed by Thompson. It is impossible to account for every figure, action and reference in this work; furthermore, that agenda would be nonessential, because Thompson, like Quarton, felt comfortable adding personal references, thereby making it his own.

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Charles White (1918-1979)

Born in 1918 in Chicago, Charles White was initially an introverted child, preferring to retreat into a world of reading and drawing. As he grew older, he became more outspoken, influenced

by Alain Locke’s The New Negro. As a student at Englewood High School, alongside other future notables such as Margaret Burroughs, Eldzier Cortor, and Charles Sebree, he often clashed with his teachers over their whitewashing of historical subjects. He joined George Neal’s Art Crafts Guild and gathered at the studio of Morris Topchevsky, where he was able to further explore his views of art, politics, and the role of the African American in society.

White graduated high school in 1937 and went on to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was subsequently hired by the Illinois Art Project in the easel division, but transferred to the mural division, where he worked with Edward Millman and Mitchell Siporin. His first major mural, Five Great American Negroes, was completed in 1940. His work was also exhibited at the American Negro Exposition, winning several awards.

White married Elizabeth Catlett in 1941 after meeting her at the South Side Community Art

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Center, and the pair moved to New Orleans where they both taught at Dillard University. Two consecutive Rosenwald scholarships allowed him to study lithography at the Art Student’s League of New York with Harry Sternberg, as well as travel the Southern United States. He used this opportunity to observe and paint black farmers and laborers for his mural, The Contribution of the Negro to the Democracy of America.

Catlett and White relocated to Mexico where they both became involved with the Taller Grafica de Popular. After their divorce, White returned to New York City. His work retained a figurative style which stood in stark contrast to the burgeoning abstract movement occurring at the time. He used drawings, linocuts, and woodcuts to celebrate the historical figures who resisted slavery, as well as ordinary African Americans struggling amid great social injustice in a postslavery America. Despite their small size, these works conveyed the power of a mural.

White was the second African American to be inducted into the National Academy of Art and Design in 1975.

600 Abide

etching (posthumous printing) 8.75� x 11.75� estate stamped, edition of 80 $1,000-2,000

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Bernard Williams (b. 1964) Bernard Williams is a native of Chicago, and holds a BFA Degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an MFA from Northwestern University. He also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. He taught art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1991-2003.

Williams has been commissioned to create numerous outdoor murals around Chicago and abroad. Mural commissions have been sponsored by a range of organizations and corporations including AT&T, GATX Corp., Kraft Foods, the Snite Museum of Art at the Univ. of Notre Dame, Indiana, Chicago Dept. of Cultural Affairs, and the Jackson Public School District, Jackson, MS. In 2003, he was selected as a resident artist at the prestigious Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He was supported there for seven months (Oct.2003-May2004) pursuing independent projects. Bernard Williams has received strong recognition as a painter and sculptor both regionally and nationally. In 2003 and 2007 Williams was awarded an Illinois Arts Council Grant of $7000. In 2001, he was among 20 artists from Chicago and San Francisco to be awarded a $10,000 grant from the Artadia Foundation to continue studio work. He has been featured at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, MS (2001), and the African-American Museum in Dallas, TX (2002). Selected group exhibitions include

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the Chicago Cultural Center; Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston; Dowd Fine Arts Gallery, Cortland, NY; and The Eiteljorg Museum of Native American and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN. In 2004, Williams gained gallery representation in New York City. He debuted as a featured artist in the cutting edge SCOPE NY EXPO with Ethan Cohen Fine Arts. In 2005 the artist had an exhibition with the Hyde Park Art Center and at Chapman University in Orange, California. In 2006, after a three month residency at the Kohler Art Center in Kohler, WI, Williams was awarded a contract to produce a permanent sculpture for the Chicago Transit Authority. (biography courtesy of McCormick Gallery, Chicago). Williams’ drawings and sculptures were featured in an innovative exhibit, Bernard Williams: The Ornamental Systems of Louis Sullivan, 2005, at the Hyde Park Art Center.

Williams’ focus in his work is in ethnographic and historical exploration. By exploring several objects or ideas simultaneously, with no regard for how they relate, he simulates the development of an individual perspective, and creates a unique identity for the artwork. An identity is derived from a combination of chosen and random experiences or stimuli. Williams shows them to us like a list of ingredients.

589 Kiva

2003 oil on canvas 9� x 12� signed, titled and dated verso $300-500

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Ellis Wilson (1899-1977)

Ellis Wilson was born in Mayfield, Kentucky in 1899. After finishing high school, he left his hometown for Chicago to study commercial art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He joined the Chicago Art League in 1925 - members which included, Richmond Barthé, Charles Dawson and William McKnight Farrow. Wilson’s earliest works were largely academic in nature - still lifes and landscapes that revealed little about the artist.

Shy and quiet, Wilson refrained from taking any political stance throughout his career as an artist, however, he did become motivated by Alain Locke’s speech at “The Negro in Art Week” exhibition in Chicago in 1927 to begin creating works that were representative of African American life. Wilson moved to Harlem and then settled in Greenwich Village. He continued to work full time while painting and studied portraiture with Xavier J. Barile on the weekends. His work was featured, most notably, at the Harmon Foundation’s 1930 and 1933 exhibitions as well as Augusta Savage’s Salon of Contemporary Art (1934) and the American Negro Exposition (1939). He was also a member of the Harlem Artists Guild. In 1935, he was employed by the Federal Arts Proj-

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ect mapping division, creating highly detailed geographical dioramas of New York City.

Wilson began applying for a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1939, so he could fully commit to painting.

His personal style was evolving, taking inspiration from contemporaries Jacob Lawrence, Horace Pippin, and Aaron Douglas. When he received his fellowships in 1944 and 1945, he traveled through the American South - Graves County, Kentucky; Georgia; South Carolina; and the sea islands, painting social realist scenes of African Americans and their daily life. Art historian and critic Justus Bier was able to secure Wilson a one man show at the Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky based on the merits of these works.

His second one man show in 1951 at the Contemporary Arts Gallery featured works from his first visit to Haiti, where he made subsequent trips to paint.

A retrospective of his work was held in 1971 at Fisk University in conjunction with William Artis. His work is found in the collections of Howard University, Studio Museum on Harlem, National Museum of American Art, and the Amsted Research Center.

608 Haitian Figures c. 1955 oil on masonite 34� x 14� signed $6,500-8,500

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Ernest Withers (1922-2007)

Withers grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and first became interested in photography at Manassas High School (in Memphis), when he was given a camera from his sister. While he was serving in the U.S. Army, he attended the Army School of Photography. Withers traveled with Dr Martin Luther King, Jr during his public life, and self-published a photo-pamphlet concerning the Emmett Till murder trial. He photographed key events in the Civil Rights Movement, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott , the Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike, Medgar Evers’ funeral, and the integration of Little Rock High School.

He also photographed the music scene on Beale Street, and early performances of Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin.

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Negro Baseball League baseball players were another important subject for Withers, including images of Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays.

His work has appeared in Jet, Ebony, Life, Newsweek and The New York Times. Wither’s work was included in the exhibit, For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights , organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County in partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

636 Brook Benton and Elvis Presley; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. resting in the Lorraine Motel following the March Against Fear, Memphis, TN; Dr. Martin Luther King; Beale Street, B.B. King’s Blues Club, Memphis (a group of 4) gelatin silver prints 19.25” x 15.25” each signed

$1,000-2,000

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633 James Brown, Mid South Coliseum; Ernie Banks, Larry Doby, Matty Brescia, Martin’s Stadium; Ernest Withers with his 1941 Ford Station Wagon; B.B. King’s Tour Bus (a group of 4) gelatin silver prints 14.5” x 19.25” each signed $1,000-2,000

Purvis Young (1943-2010)

Entirely self-educated outsider artist from the Overtown neighborhood of Miami. His work was characterized by a blending of collage and paint applied to found surfaces. Purvis Young was born into poverty in 1943. He never finished high school, but read whatever he could get his hands on at the library every possible moment.

After a stint in prison in the 1960’s, he became inspired by Vietnam War demonstrations and protest art, especially the Wall of Respect mural in Chicago, painted by members of the Black Arts Movement. He created his own mural along a deserted stretch of Goodbread Alley in Overtown, tacking up his own paintings. After two years, his work began to draw attention from tourists, the media, and eventually, the owner of the Miami Art Museum, who briefly became Young’s patron.

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Young’s magic realist paintings featured primitive calligraphic lines, often crowds of angels watching over turbulent cityscapes. His personal iconography included horses, which represented freedom, angels and large floating heads which represented hope and the goodness inherent in people, and round blue shapes which represented an all-seeing establishment.

His intriguing personal journey was the subject of the documentary, Purvis of Overtown, in 2006.

The exhibition, 30 Americans, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. featured his work in 2012. Young’s work may be found in the collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

648 Untitled (Walkers) and Untitled (Figures) c. 1980 mixed media on paper and canvas larger: 15” x 42” $700-900 Provenance: The Jonathan Demme Collection (Director Jonathan Demme spent three decades collecting “outsider” art from Haiti and other Caribbean countries, as well as the United States, South America, and Africa.)

Catalogue Note: Professionally mounted and framed 127

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