Oil on canvas, mounted to masonite, 1930. 557x457 mm; 22x18 inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto. Signed twice, titled, dated and inscribed "Signed in lower left hand corner of the painting" in ink, verso, at the time the work was mounted by the artist, likely in the 1960s. With an un-identified typed exhibiton label on the verso.
Provenance: ex-collection the artist; Judge and Mrs. Loren Miller, Los Angeles; thence by descent to a private collection, California.
Woman by the Sea is one of only three known modernist, figurative works of Hale Woodruff made in France, and is an important, early painting. In 1930, Woodruff was 30 years old living and working in France. Both he and Palmer Hayden moved there after winning the first Harmon Foundation prize in 1926. According to the artist, "150.00 of the $200 paid my trip to Paris, 3rd class, in 1927." When Woodruff left Paris for Provence, and settled in the coastal town Cagnes-sur-Mer, his painting turned more modern. This painting shows both the influence of Cézanne and Picasso, and of the African sculpture that Woodruff and his friend Alain Locke had collected in Paris. Locke and Woodruff would often go to the marché aux puces looking for African works for sale.
In Woman by the Sea we see a young African-American artist embracing the cultural forces he encountered abroad. The flattened space, angularity of forms and diagonal brush strokes show the influence of African art in France at the time. In Woman by the Sea, and his well-known Card Players, Woodruff shows that by 1930 he has learned the lessons of Cézanne and Picasso. Few African-Americans at the time, apart from Aaron Douglas, were so directly inspired by African art. Curiously, the artist's move "to go modern," as he described it, helped contribute to his return to the U.S. in 1930 due to a lack of funds. He felt it was the reason he was turned down for a scholarship from the Rosenwald Foundation. In 1931 Woodruff showed 4 of these modernist paintings at the Harmon Foundation in New York.
