Apr 07, 2016 - Sale 2409

Sale 2409 - Lot 10

Price Realized: $ 6,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
REX GORELEIGH (1902 - 1986)
Untitled (North Carolina Landscape).

Watercolor on cream wove paper, 1939. 508x356 mm; 20x14 inches. Signed and dated twice, "Goreleigh '39" and "Goreleigh '40" in watercolor, lower right.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist in Greensboro, North Carolina; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection, North Carolina.

This landscape by Rex Goreleigh is his first artwork from the WPA-era to come to auction. In 1938, Rex Goreleigh and Norman Lewis were both sent to Greensboro, North Carolina to teach art at North Carolina A&T State University and Bennett College, and to set up a community art center. The WPA sent out artists to schools without art teachers, and Goreleigh and Lewis had volunteered. In the Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art, there is a 1938 oil painting from this North Carolina period entitled Dean's Alley.