WILL BARNET (1911 2012) Yellow Bed

Sale 2678 - Lot 94

Price Realized: $ 11,700

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000

WILL BARNET (1911-2012)
Yellow Bed.

Oil on canvas, 1941. 490x562 mm; 19¼x22¼ inches. Signed lower right, and signed, titled and inscribed with the artist's address verso.

Provenance
Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York (label)
Thence to the Estate of Bertha, Schaefer, New York, 1971.
Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., New York, December 13, 1972, lot 56.
Private collection, New York.
Thence by descent to current owner, New York.

Exhibited
Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, before December 1972 (label).

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Additional Details

Will Barnet came to New York City in 1930 with a scholarship to attend the Art Students League. Far less traditional and academic than the Boston Museum School which he previously attended, the Art Students League was an environment of experimentation and gave the young artists freedom to pursue their own paths. Barnet counted Stuart Davis and Charles Locke as two of his early mentors who showed the young artist new styles. It was during this early period that Barnet's compassion and warmth towards his subjects came to the forefront. While Barnet's work of the 1930's focused on others' quotidian dramas, the outbreak of World War II spurred a period of looking inward. Perhaps turning to more intimate subjects of his young family acted as a cocoon against the War's atrocities, or an effort to recapture the humanity of his earlier works. The present work is typical of this period, when Barnet was experimenting with bright swathes of vivid color in place of shadow, and he switched his focus to scenes of domesticity.

Barnet had a long association with Bertha Schaefer, the founder of the eponymous New York gallery, his first solo exhibition at the gallery was in 1946, and he showed there regularly through the 1960's.