Apr 07, 2016 - Sale 2409

Sale 2409 - Lot 9

Price Realized: $ 16,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
NORMAN LEWIS (1909 - 1979)
Erosion.

Watercolor on cream wove paper, 1938. 356x483 mm; 14x19 inches. Signed, titled and dated "Nov. 4 - 1938" in pencil, lower right.

Provenance: private collection, Missouri.

Norman Lewis made this watercolor while he and Rex Goreleigh were teaching at the North Carolina A&T State University and Bennett College in Greensboro. The WPA sent out artists to schools without art teachers, and Goreleigh and Lewis had volunteered. Lewis was unable to tolerate the segregation of North Carolina for long, and soon returned to New York - "it upset me because I'd never been south in such intimate circumstances." Bearden/Henderson pp. 317-18.