?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
WPA LITHOGRAPH RAYMOND STETH Apostolic.
Lithograph, circa 1940. 73/4x127/8 inches, wide (full ?) margins. Signed, titled, inscribed "W.P.A. Art Program" and numbered 4/35 in pencil, lower margin. Published by the Federal Art Project, WPA, Philadelphia. A superb, dark impression of this very scarce print.
Raymond Steth joined the pioneer African American printmaker Dox Thrash in the Fine Print Workshop of the Philadelphia Federal Art Project in the fall of 1939. According to Leslie King Hammond in the exhibition catalogue essay of 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. Where Thrash was a master technician, Steth was a master of content and commentary. A natural storyteller in the tradition of the African griot, Steth poignantly recorded the life of the Black community in such prints as Apostolic, which shows the congregation of a church caught in the fervor of spiritual ecstasy."
This is the first known work of art by this important African-American artist offered at auction. We have found only 3 other impressions--in the Newark Museum and the St. Louis Art Museum WPA inventory (see WPA Artwork in Non-Federal Repositories, Edition II, G.S.A, 1999, p. 295), and in the Free Library of Philadelphia, Print and Picture Department.
