Feb 16, 2023 - Sale 2626

Sale 2626 - Lot 59

Price Realized: $ 750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

ROBERT GWATHMEY (1903-1988)


Self Portrait.
Lithograph. 445x407mm; 17 1/2x16 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 26/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by George C. Miller and Son, Inc., New York. Published by Terry Dintenfass, Inc., New York. 1961.

A very good impression. Williams 13.

According to Williams, this print was made for the opening of the Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York when Dintenfass asked each of the gallery artists to make a lithograph self-portrait. This is the only self-portrait Gwathmey ever made.

Gwathmey is one of the most celebrated painter-printmakers of African-American life in the southern United States. As an outsider to the African-American rural communities, his works are that of an observer, picturesque scenes of everyday life. He managed unbiasedly to imbue humanity and an unromanticized dignity into his subjects.

In 1941 Gwathmey was commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts to comeplete a mural, The Countryside for the post office in Eutaw, Alabama.