?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
BEULAH WOODARD (1895 - 1955) Maudelle.
Painted terra cotta, mounted on a wood base, circa 1937. Approximately 305 mm; 12 inches high.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection; thence by descent to the current owner.
Illustrated: Farrington, Lisa, Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists, figure 4.18, p. 95.
This beautiful bust by Beulah Woodard is a very scarce example of this early Californian sculptor's work. In this sensitive portrayal, Woodard displays a powerful realism - particularly in the careful modelling of her subject's features. Woodard made a different head of the model Maudelle in glazed terracotta, ex-collection the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, now in the collection of Columbia Museum of Art and Archeology and University of Missouri.
Maudelle Bass (1908 - 1989) was a professional dancer and artist's model. She danced in Agnes de Mille's Black Ritual in 1940, and appeared with Pearl Primus in the 1950's. She also modelled for such artists as Diego Rivera, Edward Weston, Carl Van Vechten and Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo. Farrington pp. 95-96.
