Sep 19, 2017 - Sale 2454

Sale 2454 - Lot 135

Price Realized: $ 4,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
FRANK W. BENSON
Old Tom.

Etching, 1926. 375x250 mm; 14 3/4x9 3/4 inches, full margins. Edition of 150. Signed in pencil, lower left. A brilliant, richly-inked impression of this large, scarce etching, with warm plate tone, crisp, inky plate edges and exceptionally stong contrasts.

A portrait of Thomas Nickerson, who was the primary caretaker of the Eastham, Massachussetts hunting lodge frequented by Benson and his companions. Nickerson died in 1923 and was memorialized by Benson in a watercolor portrait from the same year, on which he based this etched portrait three years later. The hunting guide is shown as an heroic figure, dramatically shadowed, holding a shotgun in one hand and a dead bird in the other. Paff 246.