?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
CHARLES ETHAN PORTER Still Life with Flowers.
Oil on canvas board. 350x397 mm; 14x15 3/4 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto.
Provenance: The Anthony and Davida Artis Collection of African-American Fine Art, Flint, Michigan; private collection, Chicago.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Porter (1847-1923) was a noted still life and floral painter. Porter was active from 1865 to 1915, both in New York and Hartford. In 1869, he was one of the first African Americans to study at the National Academy in New York. He later settled in Hartford where he befriended his neighbor, the famous author Mark Twain. Around 1881, after raising $1,000 from auctioning his paintings, Porter moved to Paris, where for approximately two years he enrolled at the École Nationale Superiéure des Arts Décoratifs before studying at the Académie Julian. While he unsuccessfully attempted to show his work at the Salon, his still life paintings were infused with a realism greatly influenced by Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) and by his experimentation with plein air painting.
