?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
WILLIAM A. HARPER (1873 - 1910) Untitled (French Landscape).
Oil on canvas, 1905. 413x514 mm; 16 1/4x20 1/4 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: Treadway Gallery, Chicago, purchased in the 1980s; private collection.
William Harper was born in Cayuga, Canada. His family moved to Illinois in 1885, and Harper attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1895-1901, working as a nightwatch man and janitor to pay for his tuition. He studied in Paris from 1903-1905 at the Académie Julian. In 1905, Harper earned the Municipal Art League's blue ribbon at the Art Institute of Chicago for nine of his paintings. On a return trip to France from 1907-08, Harper studied with Henry Ossawa Tanner. Harper's career was cut short when he died of tuberculosis only a few years later at the age of 36. The Art Institute held a memorial exhibition in Harper's honor, showcasing 60 of his works. This is only the third landscape of his to come to auction. His paintings are found today in the collections of Tuskegee University and Dr. Walter O. Evans. Barnwell p. 157; Kenndey p. 119.
