Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 252

Price Realized: $ 531
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(HISTORY.) H.H. McCray, artist. Group of 8 historical portraits by a Black educator and poet. 8 items, ink on board (one in colored pencil), each about 14 x 10 inches; moderate wear, the self-portrait more worn, all laid down on modern mat board. No place, circa 1930s
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Additional Details

Henry Horatio McCray Sr. (1875-1957) was a singer, poet, and for a time the principal of the South Florida Normal and Industrial Institute. The 1930 and 1940 censuses lists him as a public school teacher, in St. Petersburg and Lake City, FL. These portraits may have been drawn either as teaching aids or for lecture presentations. Included are a self-portrait titled "Henry Horatio McCray Sr., Poet--Soloist--Artist" (quite worn with tape repair); "Jesus Condemned" (the only one in colored pencil); Langston Hughes; architect Paul R. Williams; "National Rep. Arthur Mitchell" (he served in Congress 1935-1943); Booker T. Washington; Frederick Douglass; and Phillis Wheatley (on paper affixed to a larger dark board).