Feb 23, 2010 - Sale 2203

Sale 2203 - Lot 18

Price Realized: $ 12,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
LAURA WHEELER WARING (1887 - 1948)
Untitled (Rural Landscape).

Oil on canvas board, circa 1940. 275x500 mm; 14 3/4x19 3/4 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.

Provenance: estate of the artist; Milton Morris James, Yeadon, PA; private collection.

Exhibited: Philadelphia African Americans: Color, Class, and Style, 1840-1940, Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, Philadelphia, April 4 - July 8, 1988.

Illustrated: Philadelphia African Americans: Color, Class, and Style, 1840-1940, Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies. Philadelphia.

We have found only one other oil painting at auction by this important artist. Swann Galleries sold the first watercolor by this artist to appear at auction on October 8, 2009. This painting is from the same collection.

This landscape offers a charming, Impressionist view of the scenery around the artist's studio in Cheyney, PA. Upon returning from her studies in Paris in 1928, Waring organized and directed both the music and art departments at the historically black Cheyney State Teachers College in Pennsylvania, now called Cheyney University. Her work is found in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Howard University, all in Washington, DC.