?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
FRANK NEAL (1915 - 1955) Four Figures by the Sea.
Goauche and watercolor on cardstock, 1944. 402x483 mm; 15 1/2x19 inches. Signed in watercolor, lower right
Provenance: the collection of Catherine M. Bailey.
Neal moved to New York City in the early 1940s to dance on Broadway and in Katherine Dunham's dance company. While in New York, Neal and his wife, Dorcas, hosted informal weekend gatherings of black artists, writers and musicians, including Harry Belafonte, Felrath Hines, James Baldwin, Art Smith, Charles Sebree and Billy Strayhorn. David Hadju, Strayhorn's biographer, uncovered the intricacies of what became known as the Neal Salon, he described that, "A few paintings by Frank Neal, depictions of working people and still lifes in both watercolor and oil spotted the walls." At age 40 in 1955, Neal tragically died in a car accident on Grand Central Parkway. Hadju pp. 114-15.
