Sep 15, 2015 - Sale 2390

Sale 2390 - Lot 24

Price Realized: $ 3,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
RICHARD YARDE (1939 - 2011)
Untitled (Bessie Smith).

Watercolor, 1985. 610x406 mm; 24x16 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "To Maya - Marcus, Owen, Susan and Richard" in pencil, lower margin.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; the estate of Dr. Maya Angelou.

Boston artist Richard Yarde was celebrated nationally for his large-scale, daring watercolors. In paintings such as his Savoy Ballroom series, Yarde's colorful imagery and quilt-like compositions of dancers and jazz musicians reflect memories of his youth and African-American culture. Many of his watercolors are found today in many museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Yarde also had a long career in the Boston area as an art professor - teaching at Boston University, Wellesley College, Amherst College, the Massachusetts College of Art, Mount Holyoke College and the University of Massachusetts, Boston and Amherst.