Oct 09, 2014 - Sale 2359

Sale 2359 - Lot 57

Price Realized: $ 20,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
ALLAN FREELON (1895 - 1960)
Untitled (Gloucester Coast).

Oil on linen canvas, 1925. 610x762 mm; 24x30 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, PA.

Exhibited: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, with the label on the verso.

This beautiful, Impressionist landscape is the earliest and most significant oil painting by Allan Freelon to come to auction. Painted the year he graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, this seascape is most likely a view of the Bass Rocks in Gloucester. This serene coastal scene epitomizes Freelon's interest in light and color. Freelon began painting landscapes around the fishing port and town of Gloucester and visiting the artist colony there around the summer of 1924. This oil predates his time spent at Hugh Breckenridge's art school in Gloucester, and a two-year study at the Barnes Foundation from 1927-1929.

Raised in a middle-class family in Philadelphia, in 1912, Allan Freelon was the first African-American awarded a four-year scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art. He then received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from Temple University. During World War I, Freelon joined the U.S. Army, serving as Second Lieutenant. Upon his return to Philadelphia, he worked as the Art Supervisor for the Philadelphia Board of Education, while also creating his own artwork. By 1921, he had his first solo show at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, and in 1929, he was one of the featured artists in the Harmon Foundation traveling exhibition.