?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
BEN SHAHN Study for Ecclesiastes.
Watercolor and ink on paper, circa 1965. 382x258 mm; 12 7/8x10 inches. Signed in gouache, lower right recto.
Ex-collection Arthur and Anita Kahn, New York; sold Christie's, New York, February 9-10, 2016, sale 11415, lot 21; private collection, New York.
This is a study for Shahn's (1898-1969) same-titled 1965 wood engraving and two 1966 screenprints (Prescott 68, 69 and 246). The Ecclesiastes subject shows three stages of man by combining three human and three animal heads. Printed when Shahn was in his late sixties, near the end of his career, the screenprints quote from Ecclesiastes 11:9, recalling the artist's younger years, "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth."
