?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980) Portrait of a Girl.
Oil on masonite board, circa 1935-40. 273x216 mm; 10 3/4x8 1/2 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: Harold Hart, New York; the estate of Harold Hart; thence by descent to C. Arnold Hart; the estate of C. Arnold Hart.
This early study is one of only a handful of 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 shortly 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. Additionally, another very similar painting of a child by Woodruff, Black Boy, from the estate of Loïs Mailou Jones, was sold in Swann's February 16, 2012 auction of African-American Fine Art.
