American Art at Bonhams
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AMERICAN ART Wednesday May 23, 2018 AMERICAN ART Wednesday May 23, 2018 at 2pm New York BONHAMS BIDS INQUIRIES ILLUSTRATIONS 580 Madison Avenue +1 (212) 644 9001 Jennifer Jacobsen Front Cover: Lot 9 New York, New York 10022 +1 (212) 644 9009 fax Director Inside Front Cover: Lot 8 bonhams.com [email protected] +1 (917) 206 1699 Image © Wolf Kahn/Licensed [email protected] by VAGA, New York, NY PREVIEW To bid via the internet please visit Opposite: Lot 40 Saturday, May 19, 12pm - 5pm www.bonhams.com/24545 Elizabeth Goodridge Department Page: Lot 18 Sunday, May 20, 12pm - 5pm Head of Sale Registration Page: Lot 21 Monday, May 21, 10am - 5pm Please note that bids should be +1 (917) 206 1621 Inside Back Cover: Lot 13 Tuesday, May 22, 10am - 5pm summited no later than 24hrs prior [email protected] Back Cover: Lot 19 to the sale. New Bidders must SALE NUMBER: 24545 also provide proof of identity when Bailey Cardinal Lots 1 - 56 submitting bids. Failure to do this Administrator may result in your bid not being +1 (917) 206 1616 CATALOG: $35 processed. [email protected] LIVE ONLINE BIDDING IS AVAILABLE FOR THIS SALE Please email bids.us@bonhams. com with “Live bidding” in the subject line 48hrs before the auction to register for this service. Bidding by telephone will only be accepted on a lot with a lower estimate in excess of $1000 Please see pages 74-77 for bidder information including Conditions of Sale, after-sale collection and shipment. All items listed on page 76 will be transferred to offsite storage along with all other items purchased, if not removed by 5pm on May 23. © 2018, Bonhams & Butterfields Auctioneers Corp.; All rights reserved. Bond No. 57BSBGL0808 Principal Auctioneer: Matthew Girling, NYC License No. 1236798-DCA AMERICAN ART AT BONHAMS NEW YORK Jennifer Jacobsen Liz Goodridge Director Head of Sale LOS ANGELES Scot Levitt Kathy Wong Vice President Specialist SAN FRANCICSO Aaron Bastian Director 1 CHARLES GREEN SHAW (1892-1974) Untitled (Abstract on White) signed and dated ‘Shaw / 1940’ (on the reverse) oil on canvas 21 1/8 x 18in Painted in 1940. $7,000 - 10,000 Provenance The artist. Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., bequest from the above, 1974. Gift to the present owner from the above, circa 2000. 8 | BONHAMS W 2 CHARLES GREEN SHAW (1892-1974) Untitled (Atomic Flight) signed and dated ‘Charles G. Shaw / 1945’ (on the reverse) oil on board 32 x 50in Painted in 1945. $15,000 - 25,000 Provenance The artist. Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., bequest from the above, 1974. Gift to the present owner from the above, circa 2000. AMERICAN ART | 9 3 CHARLES GREEN SHAW (1892-1974) Untitled (City Skyline) signed ‘Shaw’ (lower left) oil on canvasboard 20 x 16in Painted circa 1930s. $12,000 - 18,000 Provenance The artist. Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., bequest from the above, 1974. Gift to the present owner from the above, circa 2000. 10 | BONHAMS 4 ERNEST FIENE (1894-1965) Rooftops, New York signed and dated ‘E. Fiene ‘30’ (lower right) oil on panel 24 x 18in Painted in 1930. $4,000 - 6,000 Provenance Rifkin-Young Fine Arts, New York. Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2004. AMERICAN ART | 11 ▲ 5 CHARLES DEMUTH (1883-1935) Exhibited Trees and Houses (Provincetown) Providence, Rhode Island, Rhode Island School of Design, Demuth signed and dated ‘C Demuth · 1916 -’ (lower left) Exhibition, 1939. watercolor and pencil on paper Boston, Massachusetts, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Art Museums, on 10 x 13 1/2in loan 1972-circa 1995. Executed in 1916. New York, Babcock Galleries, When Modern Was Modern: 1908- 1929, September-December 2007, no. 26. $20,000 - 30,000 New York, Babcock Galleries, GIANTS: American Modern Masters, October 14-December 17, 2010, no. 5. Provenance The artist. Literature Estate of the above. E. Farnham, Charles Demuth: His Life, Psychology and Works, Ph.D. Robert Locher, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, bequest from the above, Dissertation, Ohio State University, 1959, vol. II, pp. 494-95, no. 220. 1935. G. Greer and A. Smith, American Paintings 1860-1960, New York, Nelson Goodman, Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, acquired from the 2000, pp. 36-37, illustrated. above, 1956. Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, March 15, 2000, lot 153. Vance Jordan Fine Art, New York, acquired from the above. Thomas Colville Fine Art, New York. Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2006. 12 | BONHAMS (actual size) 6 OSCAR BLUEMNER (1867-1938) Canal, Garret Mountain, Paterson, New Jersey signed with conjoined initials ‘OFB’ (lower right) and dated and inscribed with title ‘re-painted Oil 15 x 20 / Canal Garret Mntn / S Paterson NJ / 1920’ (on the reverse) gouche, watercolor and pencil on paper 3 5/8 x 5 3/8in Executed circa 1920. $8,000 - 12,000 Provenance Owings-Dewey Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Private collection, Florida, (probably) acquired from the above. By decent to the present owner. AMERICAN ART | 13 W 7 WOLF KAHN (BORN 1927) Small Pond in a Meadow signed ‘W. Kahn’ (lower left), dated, numbered and inscribed with title ‘177-1991 / Small Pond / in a Meadow / 36 x 52’ (on the stretcher) oil on canvas 36 x 52in Painted in 1991. $30,000 - 50,000 Provenance The artist. TABA Inc., Bethesda, Maryland. Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2002. 14 | BONHAMS W 8 WOLF KAHN (BORN 1927) Barn in Corner signed ‘W. Kahn’ (lower center), dated, numbered and inscribed with title ‘#2009/7 Barn in the Corner 65x85’ (on the stretcher) and dated and numbered again (on the reverse) oil on canvas 64 x 85in Painted in 2009. $40,000 - 60,000 Provenance The artist. Ameringer Yohe Fine Art, New York. Acquired by the present owner from the above, circa 2009. AMERICAN ART | 15 PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF GEORGE F. WIGHT, CALIFORNIA 9 CHARLES SHEELER (1883-1965) Sheeler became an accomplished photographer and his skill in the Architectural Cadences medium translated into the precise compositions of his paintings signed, dated and inscribed ‘To Joan + Fred Wight with deep and works on paper, including Architectural Cadences. The effect appreciation. Charles Sheeler 1954’ (in the lower margin) of a double image, illustrated by layered architectural forms which gouache and pencil on paper laid down on paper overlap in foreground and cascade into skeletal frames among clouds, 6 1/4 x 9 1/8in, image; 9 3/4 x 12in, sheet read much like photographic images subjected to double exposure Executed in 1954. techniques. Martin Friedman wrote of Architectural Cadences, “The contours of the grain elevator...merge with the vaporous outlines of $70,000 - 100,000 other industrial structures and areas of pure abstraction exist within the picture’s realistic ambience. In these passages, shed roofs and other Provenance basic details become non-associative lines and planes defined with The artist. great clarity.” (M. Friedman, Charles Sheeler, New York, 1975, p. 169) Joan and Frederick S. Wight, California, gift of the above, 1954. By descent to the present owner from the above. The present work was completed after the oil painting dually titled, Architectural Cadences, from 1954, currently in the collection of the Exhibited Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Modeled after this Claremont, California, Pomona College, Montgomery Art Gallery, original composition, it was a unique work reproduced as an edition and elsewhere, Works on Paper 1900-1960 from Southern California of serigraph prints. According to the original owner of the present Collections, September 18-December 31, 1977, pp. 62, 94-95, work, Frederick S. Wight, these prints were issued at the suggestion no. 70, illustrated. of Edith Halpert, of The Downtown Gallery, New York, to be given with compliments to those individuals who helped underwrite the cost of Literature color reproductions published in the exhibition catalogue for Sheeler’s P. Sims, Charles Sheeler: A Concentration of Works from the 1954 retrospective at the University of California, Los Angeles. (P. Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Sims, Charles Sheeler: A Concentration of Works from the Permanent New York, 1980, p. 29, footnote 25. Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1980, footnote 25). Halpert had represented Sheeler at The Downtown Charles Sheeler found inspiration throughout his career in American Gallery since 1931. architecture and its geometric shapes and forms. In Architectural Cadences, Sheeler translates that subject in his mature, abstracted It was Frederick S. Wight, an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, style. In the artist’s later works from the 1950s, buildings are translated who organized Sheeler’s retrospective exhibition at UCLA in 1954. into flattened inter-locking forms in varying degrees of transparency, Wight began working for UCLA in 1953 as Director of the Art which are strengthened by a vibrant color palette. The result, evident in Department and presided over their exhibition program. His tenure Architectural Cadences, is a precise form of abstraction that is distinct was culminated by the inception of the university’s Wight Art Gallery to the artist. in 1974. As an educator, artist, writer and patron of the arts, he encouraged much of the artistic culture that developed in the city Sheeler was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was educated during this period and still defines the city of Los Angeles today. After at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. After the completion of his his retirement from the university in 1973, Wight exhibited his own artistic training, by 1910, he settled in Doylestown and taught himself body of work extensively and is today acknowledged as an important photography, a skill which employed him for many years and became contemporary Californian artist.