?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
SARGENT CLAUDE JOHNSON (1888 - 1967) Untitled.
Enamel on steel, 1957. 356x280 mm; 14x11 inches. Signature and date engraved into the enamel, lower left.
Provenance: John and Mediel R. Hoskins Jr., Washington DC (brother-in-law and sister of Delilah Pierce); the estate of Delilah Pierce; thence by descent to the current owner.
This small panel is a scarce, striking abstract painting by Sargent Johnson. The San Francisco sculptor met the owner of the Paine-Mahoney Company, which produced enamel on steel signs, where he was introduced to this type of commercial painting in 1947. Johnson first used it for mosaic and mural commissions. But, by the mid-1950s, he began to use the same technique for more expressive painting on small panels like this work. Other examples include The Four Sisters, 1963 in the collection of the San Francisco African-American Historical Society, and Singing Saints, in a private San Francisco collection, which reinterprets the subject of the 1940 same-titled lithograph. LeFalle-Collins/Wright p. 21.
