Page 19 - Swann Galleries - African-American Fine Art - Sale 2303 - February 14, 2013

Only the second oil painting by this expatriate artist to come to auction in the U.S., Spinning a Yarn
typifies Albert Alexander Smith’s work.This is one of his more colorful depictions of popular music
and dance—an American genre scene for audiences both in France where he was living at the time,
and for collectors back in the U.S. The year before, in 1929, Smith won the Harmon Foundation’s
bronze medal for both his paintings and prints.As Theresa Leininger-Miller points out, the depictions
reflect his experiences in Paris as a professional banjo player, and imagined settings from a rural American
South that he knew little about. Smith’s figures often reflected stereotypes of African Americans, but he
painted in a sophisticated, learned style, “warm shades of brown and gold—in the manner of Rembrandt
andVelázquez, artists whom Smith admired,” and whose work he had studied in his travels throughout
France, Italy and Spain. Leininger-Miller p. 229. [8,000/12,000]