HARTWELL YEARGANS (1915 - 2005) Bass and Guitar Musicians.
Oil on canvas, 1964. 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches. Signed in oil, lower right. Signed, titled and dated in ink on the stretcher bars.
Provenance: the estate of the artist, New York.
This is the first painting by the artist to come to auction. Hartwell Yeargans based his jazz paintings on visits to New York's Five Spot jazz club, located on St. Mark's Place and Third Avenue, in the early 1960s. It was a small "joint" that seated only 75 people, but where many jazz innovators such as Jackie Maclean, Cecil Taylor, Thelonius Monk and Ornette Coleman performed. Yeargans lived nearby in the East Village, and would bring his sketch book to performances. It also attracted many Village artists as regulars, including Willem DeKooning, Jackson Pollock, Franz Klein, Paul Jenkins, Mark Rothko and Bob Thompson.
