?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
ROMARE BEARDEN (1911 - 1988) James Baldwin.
Pencil on thin cream wove paper, circa 1950. 127x76 mm; 6x6 inches. Initialed in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: gift from the artist, Russell L. Goings, New York; Manhattan East Gallery, New York (1991); private collection, Connecticut (1992).
This drawing by Romare Bearden is a wonderful, spontanous portrait of James Baldwin, and a scarce artwork from Bearden's brief period in Paris. Bearden was thirty nine when he traveled to Paris on funds he received from the G.I. Bill in 1950. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and French at the Institut Britannique that spring. There Bearden connected with the expatriate community of writers and artists including James Baldwin, Albert Murray, Haywood "Bill" Rivers and Herbert Gentry. He also met Brancusi, Giacometti and Matisse with letters of introduction from his gallery in New York, the Koontz Gallery. Fine p. 220.
