?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
RAYMOND STETH (1917 - 1997) Wrapping Tobacco.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, circa 1940. 184x302 mm; 7 1/4x11 7/8 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, inscribed "WPA Art Program" and numbered 11/35 in pencil, lower margin. A very good, crisp impression of this very rare print.
We have found only two records of Steth's prints at auction in the past 20 years. Another impression of Wrapping Tobacco is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Raymond Steth joined Dox Thrash at the Federal Art Project in the Philadelphia Fine Print Workshop in the fall of 1939. According to Dr. Leslie King-Hammond in her essay Black Printmakers and the WPA, "Steth, working primarily in aquatint and carbograph, produced a powerful series of studies that reflect deeply and often critically on Black life and culture in America. ... Steth was a master of content and commentary."
