Apr 02, 2015 - Sale 2378

Sale 2378 - Lot 54

Price Realized: $ 57,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 35,000 - $ 50,000
NORMAN LEWIS (1909 - 1979)
Sunset #2.

Oil on linen canvas, 1960. 1120x990 mm; 49x39 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right recto. Titled in oil, verso on the upper stretcher bar.

Provenance: the artist; Judge and Mrs. Edward R. Dudley, New York; thence by descent to the current owner.

This attractive oil by Norman Lewis was painted during the last year of what curator Ann Gibson describes as his "atmospheric" abstractions that he began in the early 1950s. Sunset #2 epitomizes this series of works on both canvas and paper that describe a natural environment or phenomenon--often weather, landscape or water. Lewis used a dry brush technique, dragging a loaded brush with little medium to make floating veils or layers of light and color. This is the last painting to be offered from a collection that included Lewis' Untitled, circa 1960-64, now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gibson pp. 24-25.