?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
BEN SHAHN Robert La Follette<>.
Gouache and watercolor on smooth cream wove paper, circa 1937. 455x303 mm; 18x12 inches. Ex-collection the artist, with the estate ink stamp verso.
La Follette (1855-1925), born in Dane County, Wisconsin, and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, was elected governor of Wisconsin in 1900 and later became a United States Senator. A prominent government reformer who championed the working class American and opposed big, monopolizing businesses (he claimed that the nation's economy was dominated by fewer than 100 industrialists), La Follette supported the growth of trade unions and women's suffrage.
According to Prescott, Shahn began a series of sketches on Wisconsin's independent political movement in 1937 which were submitted in competition for a mural in a town hall near Milwaukee to which the current work is likely related.
