?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
GILBERT ADRIAN (1903-1959)
African After Glow. Oil on canvas, circa 1950. 635 x 762 mm; 25 x 30 inches (canvas). 756 x 883 mm; 29 3/4 x 34 3/4 inches (frame). Signed "Adrian" in lower right image. Title written on canvas frame. "No. 2" written on verso of canvas and on canvas frame.
Scene painted by the Hollywood costume designer known as "Adrian." This piece was number 2 of 19 oil paintings created upon returning from a 6-week tour of Africa in 1949. The "Well-Groomed Africa" series was exhibited at the Knoedler galleries in Manhattan in 1951.
Discovered by Irving Berlin in 1921, Adrian soon became a Hollywood wunderkind. He worked for Cecil B. DeMille before moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios where he became the most influential dress designer of the era, responsible for creating the Wizard of Oz costumes including Dorothy's ruby slippers, as well as dressing MGM's great stars like Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn. Broad-shouldered women's suits and the puffy-sleeve dress became his claim to fame and set the look and style that dominated American fashion during the 1930s and `40s. In the 1950s, his interest and travels in South America and Africa influenced his landscapes and fantastical fashion drawings.
