Oct 19, 2023 - Sale 2649

Sale 2649 - Lot 30

Price Realized: $ 11,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
WILLIAM SYLVESTER CARTER (1909 - 1986)
Untitled (Portrait of a Woman).

Oil on linen canvas, 1948. 637x508 mm; 26 1/2x20 inches. Signed and dated twice in oil, center right and lower right.

Provenance: private collection, Michigan.

Untitled (Portrait of a Woman) is a striking portrait of a well dressed young woman set in a surrealist landscape.

Landscape and figure painter William S. Carter was born in St. Louis, MI. He moved to Chicago in 1930 and studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the University of Illinois. In cooperation with the Harmon Foundation, in the summer of 1940, Carter was included in a group of young WPA-era artists in the important Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro at the Tanner Galleries, assembled by Alonzo Aden for the American Negro Exposition in Chicago. In 1943, he joined the Illinois Art Project of the Works Progress Administration and worked with artists such as Charles White, Eldzier Cortor, Earl Walker and Charles Davis.

Carter's works are found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the DuSable Museum of African American History and the South Side Community Art Center, all in Chicago, and the Clark-Atlanta University Art Galleries.