?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
ERNEST CRICHLOW (1914 - 2005) Dreams of the Big House.
Oil and collage on canvas, 1989. 1219x914 mm; 48x36 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of J. Bruce Llewellyn, New York.
This poignant painting is a familiar subject of Ernest Crichlow's--beginning in the WPA, he depicted the struggles of African Americans through women and children. With such paintings as Waiting, 1965, and White Fence, 1967, Crichlow developed his Social Realism to illuminate the economic and social divisions of the Civil Rights era. His later works, like Girl with Flowers, 1979, and The Balcony, 1980, both in the Hewitt Collection of African-American Art, Charlotte, NC, show a more painterly freedom and a move away from the harsher earlier subjects to more sentimental images. These images have a grandeur and dignity also found in Dreams of the Big House, which is the largest painting by the artist to come auction.
