?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980) Vertical Motion.
Sepia and black inks on textured wove paper, circa 1955. 400x502 mm; 15 3/4x19 3/4 inches. Signed in ink, lower left. Titled in graphite on a fragment of the previous frame's backing paper.
Provenance: Earl B. and Kathryn Dickerson, Chicago; thence by descent, private collection.
Earl Dickerson (1891 - 1986) was a prominent African American attorney. Known as "the dean of Chicago's Black lawyers," Dickerson in 1933 became the first African American appointed as Illinois Assistant Attorney General. He also was counsel and the eventual president and CEO of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company. Famously, Dickerson successfully argued before the U. S. Supreme Court in the landmark Hansberry v. Lee case. Kathryn Dickerson (1905 - 1980) studied fashion at the Art Institute of Chicago. She later served as a founding officer of the South Side Community Art Center, and was one of the organizers of the American Negro Exposition of 1940. Both Dickersons were avid patrons of the arts in Chicago.
This Hale Woodruff abstraction is a scarce example of a mid-career work on paper by the artist.
