Harlem Masters Take Stage at Swann Auction Galleries

Harlem African-American Fine Art masters takes center stage at Swann Auction Galleries on October 18, 2012. The sale features an extraordinary selection of museum-quality paintings, sculptures and works on paper by Harlem masters Charles White, Romare Bearden and other mportant 19^th and 20^th century artists.  Highlights include:

•  Robert Duncanson’s Young America (estimate:  $50,000 – $75,000); the earliest painting in the sale and a very scarce figurative work from the beginning of the artist’s career.  This unusual depiction of a heroic young man raising both a sword and the American flag was possibly a commission by the subject’s parents before the boy was sent off to fight in the Mexican-American

• A collection of four small but impressive works by Henry O. Tanner, oil studies for Biblical paintings by the artist (estimate range: $20,000 – $90,000). In addition, the collection includes a fine drawing study in a conte crayon and charcoal for The Head of Christ (estimate:  $30,000 – $50,000).

• For the first time, Swann will offer two Eldzier Cortor  (pictured) paintings from important periods for the artist.  Classical Composition No. 4, (estimate $200,000 – $250,000), a large, impressive oil, is the day’s top lot (pictured).  Cortor is best known for elegant, elongated depictions of women that show the influences of his study of African sculpture, 19^th-century French Painting and his travels to the Sea Islands and the West Indies.

• Harlem master Charles White’s Songs of Life (estimate:  $150,000 – $200,000) is a tour de force in pen and ink, and a recently discovered large and important drawing.  White used this drawing in his application for his Whitney Fellowship in 1954 and it has not been exhibited since.

• The large and evocative Boy with Flute by Hughie Lee Smith;  a significant work from the mid-1960s that features the recurring image of a solitary boy with a wind instrument found in each of the artist’s major periods (estimate:  $100,000 – $150,000)

Many more top artists are represented in this sale, including Hale Woodruff,  Elizabeth Catlett, William Edouard Scott and, Thelma Johnson Streat, among others.

Swann Auction Galleries is the only major auction house to conduct regular sales of African-American Fine Art, frequently setting benchmarks for works by important and lesser-known artists.

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