?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
JOHN SLOAN (1871-1951)
Shell of Hell. Etching and mezzotint. 127x101 mm; 5x4 inches, full margins. Second state (of 2). Edition of 45 (from an intended edition of 100). Signed and inscribed "100 proofs" in pencil, lower margin. 1939.
A very good impression of this extremely scarce etching. An etching created by Sloan on the eve of America's entry into World War II. Morse 305.
The WPA gave opportunities and financial help to many artists who were struggling during the Depression. Sloan, already an estalished artist and teacher at the Art Students League (who taught many artists who particapted in the WPA programs), did not fit that profile, but he did participate in the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, which hired well-known artists for its projects. He painted the mural The Arrival of the First Mail in Bronxville in 1846 for the post office in Bronxville, New York. He also created two paintings for the WPA, one The Wigwam, Old Tammany Hall, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the other Fourteenth Street at Sixth Avenue, originally hung the office of U.S. Sen. Royal Copeland and now is exhibited at the Detroit Insitute of Arts.
