Jan 28, 2021 - Sale 2556

Sale 2556 - Lot 219

Price Realized: $ 5,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY (1872-1952)
"In the Field: He felt that he must take her in his arms and run away with her." Story illustration for "A Break in Training" by Arthur Ruhl, published in Scribner's magazine July 1902, page 182. Charcoal and watercolor on board. 1000x700 mm; 39 1/2x27 1/2 inches. Signed and dated "Howard Chandler Christy 1902" in lower image. Handsomely framed.

Provenance: The Illustrators Gallery, April, 2019; thence to Dick McDonough.

This grand illustration featuring a young woman enjoying golf, with a little romance to spice up the game, embodies the essence of Christy's all-American, freedom-loving "Christy Girl."

One of the most famous artists of the late-18th and early-19th centuries, Christy was best known for depictions of this idealized kind of young American woman who, as the writer and critic S.J. Woolf once remarked: "represented the awakening female, no longer content to preside over the kitchen, to be forbidden the golf course or the vote . . . The way Christy drew her, she was popular with the males because of her charm, while the young women liked her because she embodied their dreams of emancipation."