?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
JAMES LESESNE WELLS (1902 - 1992) Friends.
Oil and charcoal on canvas, 1975. 762x978 mm; 30x38 1/2 inches. Signed and dated in charcoal, lower right.
Provenance: private Washington, DC collection.
This is only the third recorded oil painting by this important artist to come to auction. While known primarily as a printmaker, he continued to paint throughout his career. Wells first gained national recognition with the Harmon Foundation award for his oil painting Journey to Egypt in 1931. After a remarkable 39 years of teaching, Wells retired as Professor Emeritus from Howard University in 1968, and three years later, he started making color linoleum cuts. Several late career paintings appeared in the 1987 Washington Project for the Arts exhibition, James Lesesne Wells: Sixty Years in Art, with the latest work dated 1986.
