Graphite and brown pencil on soft wove paper, early 1930s. 175x137 mm; 6 7/8x5 3/8 inches. With a mirror-image pencil drawing on the verso. Restored 1 1/2-inch loss of the lower right corner.
Provenance: the artist; Edna Thrash, the artist's wife; Samuel and Sally Nowak, Philadelphia, PA; Allan H. Nowak, Sunny Isles Beach, FL.
Illustrated: Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered, Philadelphia Museum, figure 27, p. 15.
Exhibited: Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered, Philadelphia Museum, Philadelphi, PA, October 27, 2001 - February 24, 2002, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, September 10 - November 3, 2002.
This small drawing is a remarkable WPA self-portrait and a model for one of his self-portrait prints. This soft paper is typical of the kind printmakers used to transfer drawings to soft ground for etching. This drawing was traced while placed on the copper plate, marking the lines into the ground. The drawing appears to be the study for Self-Portrait, an etched copper plate in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum, of which there are no known impressions. It is also closely related to his self-portait Mr . X (first version), circa 1937-38. (Swann Galleries sold an impression on September 15, 2005 for an artist record.) The etching guidelines were then worked over with carborundum mezzotint.
Thrash later developed the line sketch into this finished, Cubist drawing and added the architectural element on the left. According to Ittmann, these "self-portraits paint an attractive picture of Thrash in his early forties: a multi-faceted artist with a poetic sensibility, dashing style and a winning sense of humor." There are other examples of the artists creating finished drawings from these prints studies in the Nowak collection. Ittmann pgs. 13 and 15.
