?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
ROY LICHTENSTEIN (AFTER) Sunrise (Light Box).
Stained-glass and illuminating metal box painted black, wired with ten fluorescent lights, 1967-68. 725x785x215 mm; 28 3/8x30 3/4x8 1/2 inches. The stained-glass produced by Atelier voor Glas in Lood, Haarlem, The Netherlands, based on Lichtenstein's Sunrise, color offset lithograph, 1965 (Corlett II. 7).
This is the prototype for a project that Norman Dolph sought to pursue with Lichtenstein, from which to produce a small edition which ultimately was not realized. Dolph first explored the idea of the project in a letter he sent to Lichtenstein and his then girlfriend Dorothy Herzka (they married in 1968) on May 29, 1967, following a birthday dinner he had attended with his first wife at Lichtenstein's 190 Bowery Street loft in New York. Dolph wrote, "Roy, if you would permit it, I would like to investigate an idea which you might be able to use. The vision of the piece has been in my mind for some time and I have not been able to find a way to approach you without sounding presumptuous. Last year when I was in Haarlem, Holland, I stumbled on a remarkable stained glass shop. It's proprietor, a wonderful craftsman, is quite a guy . . . Ever since then, I've been thinking how appropriate a 'sun rise' would be as a stained glass window, with the real sun illuminating the glass sun. With your permission, I'd like to send him the lithograph sunrise I have, for him to attempt to render it in stained glass. If it is successful, perhaps you might wish to create an edition piece."
Toward the end of 1967, Dolph wrote again to Lichtenstein, "A few Saturdays ago, I spoke with Dorothy [Herzka] at Castelli's. Among other things, we discussed your interest in experimenting with the stained glass idea I wrote you about before the summer. I have made the arrangements to have the lithograph sunrise reproduced in glass, in Europe." Atelier voor Glas in Lood, the glass maker in Haarlem, began work on the Sunrise stained-glass in the spring of 1968 and the completed work was shipped to New York on October 2, 1968.
Dolph wrote to C. Schmidt, the proprietor of the Atelier voor Glas in Lood on January 9, 1969, "Sorry this reply has taken so long but I wanted to combine my thoughts with Roy's, and though the piece has been here over a month, he has been in California till yesterday when we got together to view the work. The reaction was overwhelming and we can only say your job was magnificent in every way. And your use of the stencil to apply the red 'anti-dots' along the top was very clever. What is very easy to do with a printing press is much more difficult with glass but you solved it quite nicely. I am currently building a fluorescent illuminating box for the piece which will use daylight colored bulbs highly diffused to give the effect indoors of the glass as it would be used in a window. We are meeting with his dealer Leo Castelli next week to decide what to do next now that the experiment has proved successful." Dolph added, "I expect two things: 1. An edition of 5 or so identical pieces from a drawing originally done for you to work from, roughly the same size as the one you did. We can see two things from the test that can be changed to make the job easier for you next time. Notably the elimination of large unbroken areas of glass such as the stripe across the top through which you extended the rays to give it structural support, and the elimination of clear glass areas that require special treatment. The original drawing will take these factors into consideration and we will send it to you for comments before progressing . . . if you need anything changed to make it easier to construct we can do so. 2. I hope too that we can interest an architect in commissioning an original window in a large size, comprised of several panels. I think this will be a good possibility as we now have the sample for someone to get an idea how such a window might look." Clearly Lichtenstein was pleased with the prototype, was participating in the project with Dolph and was prepared to provide an updated drawing for the Dutch glass studio to use to produce an edition.
Whatever came of the January 1969 meeting with Leo Castelli, with Lichtenstein, Dolph and the Sunrise (Light Box) will not be known for certain, but it can be surmised that the project appeared to Castelli to be too complex and technically challenging (it was not the sort of editions work that the gallery was pursuing at the time). For his part, and perhaps lacking Castelli's enthusiasm for the project, by early 1969 Lichtenstein may have been retreating from more "experimental" editions work and advancing toward more traditional printmaking projects with greater commercial viability. He had published, in 1967, with Original Editions, New York, and Leo Castelli Gallery, his first solo print portfolio, the technically complex Ten Landscapes series of ten screenprints on Rowlux with collage on composition board (Corlett 51-60, see lot 161). Not long thereafter, he commenced work with the printer / publisher Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, on several more "straightforward" projects, including the Haystack and Cathedral series, of ten and eight lithographs respectively, both published in 1969 (see lot 237). Dolph too seems to have dropped the project in early 1969, after which there is no further correspondence with Lichtenstein regarding the Sunrise (Light Box) or any later mention of it in his archives. The current work remains the only known prototype.
Provenance: Norman Dolph, New York; thence by descent to the current owner.
