Feb 14, 2013 - Sale 2303

Sale 2303 - Lot 34

Price Realized: $ 1,920
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
WILLIAM E. SMITH (1913 - 1997)
Two Soldiers (Nostalgia).

Watercolor on wove paper, 1945. 235x160 mm; 9 1/4x6 3/8 inches. Signed and dated "1/5" and "45" in ink, lower right recto. Titled in pencil, upper left verso.

Provenance: the artist; Marjorie Witt Johnson; John Axelrod, Boston (2000); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011).

During World War II, Smith served in the United States Army, possibly with an all-black unit that participated in the famous Red Ball Express, a transportation and supply mission in France. In 1944, he won a trip to Paris in a GI art contest on the theme "How to Fight Mud as Well as Nazis." Smith made sketches of fellow GIs, and painted other watercolor scenes in France and Belgium from 1944-45. Biography courtesy of Susan Teller Gallery.