?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
CHARLES WHITE (1918 - 1979) Untitled (Head of a Man).
Conté crayon, ink and oil wash on gessoed board, circa 1967-68. 610x762 mm; 24x30 inches.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; Nat King Cole, Los Angeles; thence by descent to his estate; private Florida collection. Nat King Cole and his wife, Maria, were early supporters of the artist in Los Angeles and owned several works by the artist.
This powerful portrait by Charles White is impressive in the expressivenes of both the subject and the medium. White no longer drew in just crayon or charcoal, but painstakingly layered media with fixative to achieve a new level of depth and richness. Lucinda Gedeon, author of White's unpublished catalogue raisonné, noted how White often used a wide variety of materials from "simple pen and ink, wash, charcoal, conté crayon, oil and wash, to a combination of them all, which are applied, 'with Q-tips, Kleenex, rags, balsa wood, and a whole slew of other things...'" This is the first oil wash work by Charles White to come to auction. Gedeon p. 47.
