Sep 21, 2023 - Sale 2645

Sale 2645 - Lot 3

Price Realized: $ 1,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
AMERICAN SCHOOL
Wall Street Errand Boy.

Oil on canvas, circa 1855. 615x500 mm; 24x20 inches.

Provenance: Private collection, Massachusetts.

The current work is painted on a canvas with the supplier's name and address "Edward Dechaux, New York" stenciled in black on the verso. Dechaux was active as an art materials supplier in New York from around 1840-the mid-1860s.

The Wall Street errand boy "Ginger Nut" was a popular character in Herman Melville's short story Bartleby, the Scrivener, published in two parts in the November / December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856.