?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
FREDERICK CORNELIUS ALSTON (1895 - ) Knight Shift.
Oil on coarse linen canvas, circa 1920. 915x710 mm; 36x28 inches. Titled and dated in pencil, verso.
Provenance: purchased at auction on May 9, 2004, with two related works, a watercolor and a gouache; private California collection. We have found no other auction records for this artist.
Modern paintings by African-American artists working in the 1920s are very scarce, yet Frederick C. Alston had considerable success in that period. Born in Wilmington, NC, Alston lived in St. Louis, Missouri. He achieved significant exposure through the Harmon Foundation in New York where his work was included in group exhibitions in 1929 (including 4 works), 1931 and 1933. His paintings were also shown in the 1929 Harmon Foundation-sponsored exhibition Paintings and Sculptures by American Negro Artists at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. His work was shown at the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC in 1948, and later included in the famous Barnett-Aden collection. Despite this impressive showing, little is known of the artist today. Two of his paintings, Song Feast and The Good Books Says (shown in the 1929 Harmon exhibition), are now in the collection of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD.
