Page 15 - Swann Galleries - African-American Fine Art - Sale 2303 - February 14, 2013

5 ● 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, NewYork (2006); John Axelrod, Boston
(2008); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011).
Exhibited: African-American Art: 200 Years, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, NewYork, January 10 - March
8, 2008, with the labels on the frame back.
Illustrated: African-American Art: 200Years, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, NewYork, 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 OssawaTanner 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. [12,000/18,000]