Oil on thin cardstock, 1937-38. 457x356 mm; 18x14 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled and dated in pencil on the verso.
Provenance: estate of the artist, Oakland, CA, with the artist's typed label on the backing paper.
This modern painting is the earliest oil by Claude Clark to appear at auction--painted while the artist was a student at The Pennsylvania School of Industrial Arts. In 1935, Clark won a four-year scholarship to the commercial art school, where he majored in book illustration. While he did not receive formal fine art training, according to his family, Clark was encouraged by a few instructors who recognized his talents in painting. He later was famously supported by Dr. Albert C. Barnes, and in 1944, his painting Cutting Pattern was the second work by an African-American artist accepted into the Barnes Foundation, after one by Horace Pippin. Messenger p. 48.
