Oct 04, 2018 - Sale 2487

Sale 2487 - Lot 42

Price Realized: $ 6,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
ELLIS WILSON (1899 - 1977)
Haitian Children.

Oil on masonite board, circa 1954-60. 356x610 mm; 14x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto. Signed in oil (twice), verso.

Provenance: Collectors of American Art, Inc., New York, with the label on the frame back; R. R. Schram, Detroit (1963); private collection, Connecticut.

Ellis Wilson's bold Haitian paintings earned him glowing press coverage in The New York Times, Art News and Art Digest in 1954. When they were shown at New York's Contemporary Arts Gallery, Wilson travelled to Haiti in 1952 after winning a $3,000 prize in the national Terry Art Exhibition in Miami. These Haitian paintings are now found in museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, the Amistad Research Center, Howard University and the North Carolina Museum of Art. Henderson/Bearden pp. 337-343.