Oil on linen canvas, circa 1944-49. 508x610 mm; 20x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New York; private collection, Massachusetts, acquired at Swann Galleries, February 17, 2011.
Ellis Wilson was born in Kentucky and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1920s. He moved to New York in 1928, where he was a regular exhibitor in important early exhibitions by African American artists, including the Harlem Art Guild. Wilson worked for the Federal Art Project from 1935-40, and then between 1941-1944, in an aircraft factory. His fellow workers became the subjects of several paintings that he submitted with his application for a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he won in 1944. Using the financial resources of his fellowship, Wilson traveled throughout the South, painting Black workers. After exhibiting in several museum exhibitions in the 1940s, Wilson traveled to Haiti in 1952 on the first of several visits that resulted in a large body of work in his later, more abstract style.
