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Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(ART.) Four watercolor portraits of North Carolina women and girls by Clary Webb Peoples. Watercolor and pencil on heavy paper, various sizes, each initialed "CWP"; light mat toning, mount remnants and 1962 accession stamps or numbers on verso. [Near Asheville, NC], 1935 and undated
These four portraits were created by a white amateur artist from North Carolina whose lifelong hobby was "sketching negroes."
[Aunt Sarah Gudger.] 8 x 6 inches, 1935. Sarah Gudger (1816-1938) was born into slavery in the Oteen neighborhood of Asheville, and spent her entire life in the Asheville area. She was interviewed and photographed by the WPA Writers' Project in 1937. Her 20 October 1938 Asheville Citizen obituary included research from Mrs. Peoples suggesting that Gudger was 119 at the time that this portrait was created, and 122 at the time of her death. Although this portrait is not captioned, Gudger's connection to the artist, her level of local fame in her final years, and the close facial resemblance to the 1937 WPA portrait make this a strong attribution. The portrait is 8 x 6 inches.
[Aunt Annie Puryear.] 8 1/4 x 6 inches, mat remnants on recto; undated.
[Eva Singing Lullaby to Doll.] 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches; undated.
[Mary Lou.] 15 3/4 x 12 inches (wide margins); undated.
The artist Mrs. Emma Clary Webb Peoples (1878-1956) was the daughter of a Nashville grocer, and married the head of a Tennessee boarding school. They moved to Asheville, NC in the late 1920s, and remained there through at least 1943. She was generally known as Mrs. Clary Webb Peoples. She submitted photographs to the Nashville Banner as early as 1921, and her watercolors were exhibited in Asheville, NC in 1928 (Asheville Citizen, 3 April 1928). She exhibited 16 of her "water color studies of negro types" in Meadville, PA in 1944; "The Campus of Allegheny College" newspaper of 2 November 1944 noted "Sketching negroes has been a lifetime hobby of Mrs. Peoples, and she is still pursuing it." Her daughter Clary Webb Peoples Bowen (1913-1991) was a fine arts major at Duke, but married in June 1938; she was not the artist behind these watercolors.
Provenance: deaccessioned by Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art, TN; Stair Galleries auction, 5 August 2017. The titles of each portrait were provided by Stair Galleries, presumably as obtained from the museum, but are not actually inscribed on the portraits.
