?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
HUGHIE LEE-SMITH (1915 - 1999) River's Edge.
Oil on canvas, circa 1957-59. 508x812 mm; 20x32 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New York; thence by descent to the current owner.
Exhibited: Reality Expanded--Hughie Lee-Smith, Rex Goreleigh, Eldzier Cortor, The Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Roxbury, MA, January 10 - 31, 1973; Studio Museum in Harlem, March 18, 1973, with the label on the frame back.
River's Edge is a wonderful example of Hughie Lee-Smith's landscapes that explore an existential space. These wood posts are a key part of his vocabulary, compositional elements that he has used throughout his career. As early as Untitled, 1947, in the Walter O. Evans collection, Lee-Smith used this vertical device to give a sense of depth and a human scale and presence in place of a figure.
