?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
EDWARD HOPPER Portrait of Walter Tittle (The Illustrator).
Etching, 1918. 125x102 mm; 5x4 inches, full margins. One of only several proofs. Signed and dedicated in pencil, lower margin. A superb, richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce etching.
We have not found another impression at auction in the past 25 years. Levin lists an impression at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (70.1079).
Hopper and Tittle were neighbors at 3 Washington Square North, New York, where they rented adjoining studios for 13 years beginning in January 1914. The fellow artists supported each other during these early years in New York, with Hopper teaching Tittle the art of etching (leading Tittle to become the most sought after portraitist of his day) and Tittle helping Hopper secure much needed work as an illustrator. Hopper made 2 etchings of Tittle in 1918, this one being the more developed subject (Levin 53 and 54).
Arthur Hosking (1874-1970), the dedicatee, was also an illustrator. This impression passed down through his family to the current owner.
The illustration in Levin, from the Whitney Museum of American Art, appears to be much more lightly printed than the current impression. Levin 54.
