?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
ED WILSON (1916 - 1997) Ralph Ellison.
Bronze and stainless steel, 1974-5. 505x505x204 mm; 20x20x8 inches.
Provenance: estate of Fanny Ellison, wife of Ralph Ellison, New York. This sculpture was fabricated for Ellison at the same time as the artist's commission for the Ralph Ellison Library in Oklahoma City. This bronze portrait is in a smaller steel surround than the one found in the memorial. As most of the artist's commissions were for public or institutional works, individual works are very scarce, and this is the first known work of the artist to come to auction.
Illustrated: a detail of the bronze and view of the larger version, Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African-American Artists, p. 457.
Wilson is a sculptor known for his public commissions but often overlooked despite having a chapter in A History of African-American Artists. After obtaining a Master's degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1953, Wilson taught at North Carolina College in Durham. Wilson was greatly influenced by William Zorach who Wilson befriended when Zorach was working on a local commission. Wilson later went on to teach at Harpur College, SUNY, Binghamton, where he worked until his retirement in 1992. Apart from the Ellison commission, Wilson is best known for his JFK Memorial Park commission in Binghamton of 1969. His sculpture is also found in the collections of Howard University, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the State University of New York, Binghamton. Bearden/Henderson pp. 455-461; Riggs pp. 577-8.
