Feb 13, 2014 - Sale 2338

Sale 2338 - Lot 72

Price Realized: $ 7,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980)
Flowers.

Oil on thick cardstock, circa 1945-48. 305x406 mm; 12x16 inches. Signed in oil (indistinctly), lower right recto. Signed, titled, and inscribed "459 8th Avenue, N.Y.C" in oil on the frame, verso. Also inscribed "500 W. 140, N.Y.C" in ink, verso.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection. With a printed label from the Museum of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, verso.

This is an unusual example of Hale Woodruff's still life painting. Few early still lifes are known, as Woodruff focused on landscapes--Still Life Interrior, circa 1930, and Untitled, 1931, ink and wash on paper, are two known examples from France. At the time of his 1936 trip to Mexico to study the murals of Diego Rivera, Woodruff also painted a modernist Night Blooming Circus, circa 1936, in the Clark Atlanta University art collection, also against a dark background. In the fall of 1945, he moved to New York after accepting a teaching position at NYU.