Feb 17, 2011 - Sale 2237

Sale 2237 - Lot 20

Price Realized: $ 2,640
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
WILLIAM E. SMITH (1913 - 1977)
Native Son.

Linoleum cut, 1938. 337x152 mm; 13 1/4x6 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/39 in pencil, lower margin. A very good, dark impression of this scarce print.

Smith's linoleum cuts from the late 1930s honed in on Chicago's race-based poverty; yet the adolescent in Native Son--the protypical embodiment of youthful indifference--could be in any urban center at this time. Mullen p. 89.

Another impression of this print can be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.