Title: AFRICAN-AMERICAN FINE ART
Date: February 14, 2013
Time: at 2:30 PM
Exhibition: Sat., February 9, 12-5
Mon., February 11, 10-6
Tues., February 12, 10-6
Wed., February 13, 10-6
Thurs., February 14, 10-noon
Contact Person: Nigel Freeman
nfreeman@swanngalleries.com

Elizabeth Catlett, Barkley Hendricks, Norman Lewis, William T. Williams, Charles White, and many other important African-American artists are featured in this auction, which includes paintings, sculptures and prints.

Highlights include:

Henry Ossawa Tanner's The House (Wall) in Blue, an oil study on a wood panel, circa 1908-12, likely painted during a trip to Algeria or Morocco, shown top left.

The first of Norman Lewis's WPA-era oil paintings to come to auction, Meeting Place, oil on canvas, 1941, is part of a group of paintings to be sold by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for the benefit of the collection. Also from the collection are works by Charles Alston, Richmond Barthé, Beauford Delaney, Laura Wheeler Waring and Charles White.

The cover lot, Poet #4 by Hughie Lee-Smith, is an important oil on masonite painting dating from 1954. The painting not only epitomizes the artist's style of the mid-1950s, but incorporates a self-portrait.

A large painting by William T. Williams, Up Balls, acrylic on canvas, 1971, is only the second painting by the artist to come to auction.

The catalogue ends with a tribute to Elizabeth Catlett, who passed away last April. It includes the complete 1989 I am a Black Woman set of prints, the first time the set has come to auction, as well as Sister, 1971, a green marble sculpture, shown left.