?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
WALTER W. ELLISON (1900 - 1977) Untitled.
Oil on canvas, 1937. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection.
This fascinating, surreal image of a woman receiving a facial is a very scarce, early painting by this Chicago painter and printmaker about whom little is known. This is only the third painting by Ellison to come to auction. It is believed he migrated to Chicago from rural Georgia via a train boxcar. Ellison studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago and was active at the South Side Community Art Center, where he was employed by the easel division of the Illinois Art Project of the WPA in the 1930s. In 1940, he exhibited in the important Tanner Galleries Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro (1851-1940) in Chicago, and in 1942 in the first Negro Annual Exhibition at Atlanta University. Today, his work is found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the St. Louis Art Museum, and the Chicago Public Library. Schulman p. 109.
