HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980) African Man with Fishing Nets.
Watercolor, circa 1930. 460x375 mm; 18x14 3/4 inches. Signed in watercolor, lower left.
Provenance: gift of the artist to a private French collection; Ipyana Wasret, Charlotte, NC; the Hale Woodruff estate, New York; private New York collection.
This watercolor is one of the few known figurative works that Hale Woodruff made while living in France. In 1930, Woodruff was 30-years-old and painting landscapes around Paris, where he and Palmer Hayden had moved after winning the first Harmon Foundation prize in 1926. Woodruff left Paris for Provence in the summer of 1930 and settled in the coastal town Cagnes-sur-Mer, attracted to its artistic history, sunlight and cheap accommodations. Woodruff was not only following in the footsteps of his countrymen Palmer Hayden and William H. Johnson, but such notables as Modigliani, Renoir and Soutine.
