Feb 16, 2012 - Sale 2268

Sale 2268 - Lot 85

Price Realized: $ 15,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980)
Black Boy.

Oil on masonite, circa 1930-35. 273x216 mm; 10 3/4x8 1/2 inches. Incised signature, lower right recto. Signed and titled in oil, verso.

Provenance: collection of the artist; thence by descent to the Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-Noël Trust.

This early study is one of only a handful of early paintings by Woodruff that have come to auction with an African-American subject. The limited, dark palette and simplified forms link this work to the period just after his return from France. Woodruff did a number of paintings of children, including his celebrated Negro Boy, 1938, in the collection of Robert L. Johnson from the Barnett-Aden Collection.