February 14, 2013
Live Auction104 East 25th Street
New York, NY, 10010 USA
Phone: 212.254.4710
Fax: 212 979 1017
Email: swann@swanngalleries.com
Viewing NotesExhibition & Sale Schedule: Sale 2303 - African-American Fine Art - begins at 2:30pm in New York on Thurs, Feb 14. All material in Sale 2303 on display at our premises in New York City, 104 East 25th Street, as follows - Sat, Feb 9: Noon to 5pm - Mon, Feb 11: 10am to 6pm - Tues, Feb 12: 10am to 6pm - Wed, Feb 13: 10am to 6pm - Thurs, Feb 14: 10am to Noon.
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Lot 1: EDWARD M. BANNISTER (1828 - 1901) Landscape, Field and Woods.
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Description: EDWARD M. BANNISTER (1828 - 1901) Landscape, Field and Woods. Watercolor and pencil on thin wove paper, circa 1885. 102x178 mm; 4x7 inches. Initialed in pencil, lower right. Titled in pencil on the mount, lower margin. Provenance: private collection, New York; thence by descent to the current owner. Exhibited: The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, with the label on the frame back. Landscape, Field and Woods is a beautiful and fresh watercolor study, and a scarce example of a plein air sketch by this important Rhode Island landscape artist. This is only the third watercolor by the artist to come to auction. Similar sketches in both pencil and watercolor are in the collection of the Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans.
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Lot 2: EDWARD M. BANNISTER (1828 - 1901) Untitled (Rhode Island Landscape).
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Description: EDWARD M. BANNISTER (1828 - 1901) Untitled (Rhode Island Landscape). Oil on linen canvas, 1882. 305x355 mm; 12x14 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right. Provenance: private collection. This moody, tonal landscape is from the artist's mid-career period in Rhode Island. Bannister helped found the Providence Art Club in 1878, which became the model for the Rhode Island School of Design.
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Lot 3: HENRY OSSAWA TANNER (1859 - 1937) The House (Wall) in Blue.
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Description: HENRY OSSAWA TANNER (1859 - 1937) The House (Wall) in Blue. Oil on wood panel, circa 1908-12. 331x235 mm; 13x9 1/4 inches. Titled in pencil, upper right verso. Provenance: ex-collection the estate of the artist, stamped and signed by the artist's son, Jesse O. Tanner, Le Douet, France; The Paris American Art Company, 125 boulevard Montparnasse, Paris and 2 rue Bonaparte, Paris, with both ink stamps on the verso, private collection; thence by descent to the current owner. Tanner made studies on small wood panels during his trips to Tangiers and the Holy Land from the end of the 19th century until 1912. He made his first two trips to Egypt and Palestine during 1897-98. At this time, his painting style also took on a looser, impressionist manner as seen in Study for Christ and Nicodemus on a Rooftop, circa 1898-1899, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. According to Adrienne L. Childs's essay "Tanner and 'Oriental' Africa," he later visited Algeria from February to March of 1908, but did most of his modernist "Orientalist" works from his last 1912 visit to Morocco.The dark shadows and blue palette of this empty nocturnal street scene date this painting to this later period. Marley p. 100.
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Lot 4: MAY HOWARD JACKSON (1877 - 1931) Shell-Baby (Baby in a Clam Shell).
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Description: MAY HOWARD JACKSON (1877 - 1931) Shell-Baby (Baby in a Clam Shell). Cast bronze, with a dark brown patina, 1914. Approximately 83x127x89 mm; 3 1/4x5x3 1/2 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed with the foundry mark "Desygn ©" on the back. Provenance: private collection. This early, small bronze is the first work by this early 20th century sculptor to come to auction. Born the same year as Meta Warrick Fuller, according to Lisa E. Farrington, both came from privileged families that embraced the fine arts and studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. May Howard Jackson won a scholarship to attend in 1895, the year before Fuller--becoming the first African-American woman to attend. She married in 1902, and moved to Washington, DC, establishing a studio there and exhibiting at the Corcoran Gallery and the Veerhoff Galleries by 1916. She was rejected by the Washington Society of Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design before joining the faculty at Howard University, where she taught James A. Porter. She showed her works at the Harmon Foundation and the Barnett-Aden Gallery in the 1920s and '30s. Her work today is found in the Barnett-Aden Collection and at Howard University. Farrington pp. 72-74; St. James p. 266.
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Lot 5: WILLIAM EDOUARD SCOTT (1884 - 1964) Untitled (Sharecropper).
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Description: WILLIAM EDOUARD SCOTT (1884 - 1964) Untitled (Sharecropper). Oil on masonite, circa 1915-18. 330x410 mm; 13x16 1/8 inches. Signed in oil, lower right. Provenance: Marie M. Young; Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York (2006); John Axelrod, Boston (2008); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011). Exhibited: African-American Art: 200 Years, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, January 10 - March 8, 2008, with the labels on the frame back. Illustrated: African-American Art: 200 Years, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, p. 49. This landscape is a scarce, early depiction of the rural South by Scott--one of only a few of his Southern paintings to come to auction. From Indianapolis, William Edouard Scott trained at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1904-08, and then studied with Henry Ossawa Tanner in France. When he returned from Europe in 1912, he toured the South to paint rural scenes that were not typical of the landscape genre. This painting, and works such as It's Going to Come, 1916, of a proud woman outside her wooden shack, combine his confident paint handling with realist imagery of a poor, rural countryside. His 1918 oil, Traveling (Lead Kindly Light), was used as the April 1918 cover of Crisis magazine; it was inspired by his own grandparents who had traveled by ox cart from North Carolina to Indianapolis in 1847. Reynolds/Wright p. 255; Taylor/Warkel pp. 22-24.
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