Oct 06, 2011 - Sale 2255

Sale 2255 - Lot 62

Price Realized: $ 15,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
FELRATH HINES (1913 - 1993)
Hanging Garden.

Oil on canvas, 1954. 508x610 mm; 20x24 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled and inscribed "24x20" in pencil, verso.

Provenance: Parma Gallery, New York, with the ink stamp on the strecther bar; St. Julian Fishburne, Hines's friend and fellow painter and conservator; private collection.

This fine example of Hines's early abstraction is only the second painting by this artist to come to auction. During the 1950s, Hines achieved critical recognition with two solo exhibitions at Parma Gallery in 1957 and 1959, which was his last lifetime New York exhibition. Through the 1950s, he continued in this Abstract Expressionist style while working as a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. By the 1960s, he moved to a flatter, more geometric form of abstraction, and became a founding member of the Spiral Group in 1963. Hines was later the chief conservator at both the National Portrait Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. Only after his retirement in 1984 was Hines finally able to paint full-time.