?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 18,000 - $ 22,000
W. EUGENE SMITH (1918-1978) The Walk to Paradise Garden. 1948; printed 1957-65. Silver print, the image measuring 15¼x13⅜ inches (38.7x34 cm.), the mount 20x16 inches (50.8x40.6 cm.), with Smith's signature with a stylus on print recto, and his credit and copyright with his 821 Sixth Avenue address in ink on mount verso.
Provenance The Estate of Michael Carlebach
From 1954 to 1964 the Sixth Avenue jazz loft, located in an obscure commercial building, was the "after-hours headquarters" for hundreds of jazz musicians, including the highly celebrated Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus. Its effervescence has been extensively documented by photographer W. Eugene Smith who lived in the building for seven years from 1957 to 1965.
Gene Smith is a legendary figure in the annals of photography and is considered one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. A celebrated photojournalist for LIFE magazine, he covered the American offensive against Japan during World War II. In Okinawa he was severely injured by mortar fire. His war wounds resulted in two painful years of hospitalization and plastic surgery, during which time it was doubtful whether he would ever be able to return to photography.
The psychological darkness that enveloped Smith was transformed one day in 1946, when he took a walk with his two children, Juanita and Patrick, towards a sun-bathed clearing: He wrote: "While I followed my children into the undergrowth and the group of taller trees - how they were delighted at every little discovery! - and observed them, I suddenly realized that at this moment, in spite of everything, in spite of all the wars and all I had gone through that day, I wanted to sing a sonnet to life and to the courage to go on living it."
The photograph was a highlight of Edward Steichen's "The Family of Man: exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and has been widely reproduced.
