RICHARD DEMPSEY (1909 - 1987, AMERICAN) S & K House, Long Beach, North Carolina.
Watercolor and ink on wove paper, circa 1960. 483x635 mm; 19x24 3/4 inches. Signed Dempsey and inscribed North Carolina, lower left recto. Titled and with the artist's Takoma Park address ink stamp verso.
Provenance: Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, with the label on the frame back; private collection.
This colorful abstracted landscape is an excellent example of the mid-career work of Richard Dempsey. In 1951, Dempsey became associated with the Washington, DC color field school with his inclusion in the first Annual Exhibition of the Loïs Mailou Jones & Céline Tabary Studio Group. Alongside Delilah Pierce and Alma Thomas, Dempsey showed at the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC through the 1950s. These watercolors are organic abstractions of the local color and scenery that Dempsey encountered on his travels to Haiti, Jamaica, and North Carolina in the late 1950s. His work today is found in the Atlanta University Collection of Afro-American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Harriet and Harmon Kelly Collection of African American Art, San Antonio.
