?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
JOSEPH DELANEY Third Avenue Movie.
Oil on canvas, 1940. 430x535 mm; 17x21 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left recto and signed, titled and with the artist's address in oil on the stretcher, verso.
Provenance: Sragow Gallery, New York, purchased by the current owner, private collection, Toronto 1986.
Delaney (1904-1991) arrived in New York in 1930, enrolling in the Art Students League and studying under Alexander Brooke and Thomas Hart Benton. Delaney took to heart the League's belief in progressing uniquely American aesthetic and subjects. He exhibited in the inaugural Washington Square Art Show in 1931, alongside Don Freeman and became employed by the Works Progress Administration until 1943. Delaney had always expressed a natural curiosity in the daily lives of people in the city. As in the present early work, he painted his observations of the quotidian without bias or political motive. Delaney once said, "The curtain goes up on the stage of life every time we walk into the street."
Edward Hopper enjoyed going to the movies and was inspired to paint his own version of the past time in 1939, his oil on canvas New York Movie, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This painting evokes the isolation found in a room full of people, as the usherette rests against the balustrade of the theater's interior while the audience, unnoticing, is entranced by the glowing projection. Hopper used his sketches from the Strand, Palace, Republic and Globe theaters for the interior of the painting.
