Feb 06, 2007 - Sale 2102

Sale 2102 - Lot 25

Price Realized: $ 4,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
CHARLES H. ALSTON (1907 - 1977)
The Man Inside.

Graphite on thin wove paper, circa 1937. 392x315 mm; 15 1/2x12 1/2 inches. Signed in pencil, lower right.

Provenance: Ex-collection Randall Galleries, New York; Kenkeleba House, New York, with the labels on the frame back.

Exhibited: Charles Alston Retrospective, Kenkeleba House, New York, 1990.

One of Alston's illustrations for The man Inside; being the record of the strange adventures of Allen Steele among the Xulus by Victor Francis Calverton, published by Scribner's in 1937. Alston had been the first black supervisor of a WPA mural project, the important mural series for Harlem Hospital, two of which he painted himself.In New York, Alston did freelance commercial work the year after the WPA funds for art project instruction ended.