?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
ROMARE BEARDEN (1911 - 1988) Billie Sings At Minton's.
Oil monotype, with collage (the flower), on heavy wove paper, circa 1976. 1016x750 mm; 40x21 1/2 inches. Arches watermark. Bears the artist's name in pencil, upper left. Estate blind stamp recto.
Provenance: the artist; the estate of Nanette Bearden, the artist's wife.
This impressive jazz monotype of singer Billie Holiday is a variation on Romare Bearden's blues queen theme and composition found in the iconic 1974 collage Show Time, from his Of the Blues series. Sarah Kennel in The Art of Romare Bearden, in addition to a vivid descripton of this "wonderfully brazen" collage, notes how the upraised arm is a gesture not only found in Harlem nightclubs, but in the 1879 Edgar Degas color pastel Café Singer. Degas was also an early proponent of monotype, and similarly re-worked transferred images with pencil or watercolor additions. However, this is the first Bearden monotype we have encountered with an added element of collage. Fine pp. 103 and 145.
