Nov 15, 2012 - Sale 2294

Sale 2294 - Lot 56

Price Realized: $ 2,280
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
JOSEPH SOLMAN
Woman Reading.

Gouache and pencil on newspaper mounted on thick cream wove paper. 355x270 mm; 14x10 3/4 inches. Initialed in pencil, lower right recto, and signed in pencil, lower right on the mat.

According to the artist's son, Paul, before Joseph Solman became a professor of painting at City University, he spent roughly 20 years working as a clerk at the Belmont, Aqueduct and Jamaica raceways. From 1945 until around 1963, Solman spent his long commute making pencil studies of fellow straphangers, to which he added gouache at his studio. He considered the subway the best place to create figure studies, as his life subjects would effortlessly hold an unwitting pose for time on end.