Feb 06, 2007 - Sale 2102

Sale 2102 - Lot 52

Price Realized: $ 7,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
CHARLES WHITE (1918 - 1979)
We Have Been Believers.

Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1949. 296x276 mm; 11 5/8x10 3/4 inches, wide margins. Edition of approximately 30. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Robert Blackburn, Printmaking Workshop, New York. 4 1/2-inch repaired tear, upper margin, just into the forehead of the left figure; sheet backed with thin Japan paper. A very good, dark impression of this very scarce print.

We have not found another impression at auction in 20 years, and only two other known impressions in public collections, in the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Archives and Collection, The Library of Congress, and The Cleveland Museum of Art.

In 1949, Robert Blackburn was Charles White's primary printer in New York. The original charcoal drawing, the basis for the print, is in the Walter O. Evans Collection, Detroit. The drawing was inspired by a poem of the same title by Margaret Walker about the sustaining power of African-American religious faith. Gedeon Ea8.