Jun 10, 2014 - Sale 2353

Sale 2353 - Lot 3

Price Realized: $ 25,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
LÖIS MAILOU JONES (1905 - 1988)
Monday at Menemsha.

Oil on linen canvas, 1943. 381x457 mm; 15x18 inches. Signed in oil, and dated and inscribed "©" in ink, lower right recto. Signed, titled and dated in ink, lower stretcher bar verso.

Provenance: collection of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection, New York.

This charming and colorful view of Menemsha is a wonderful early example of the artist's painting on Martha's Vineyard. Menemsha's docks were an important subject to the artist and one which she revisited many times over a 60-year period. Jones knew the area well--as an artist, beginning with her first oil landscapes in the late 1930s, and from her youth through her family's ties to the area. Her grandmother worked as a housekeeper and nanny on the Vineyard, and had saved up to purchase land in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, where Jones began spending summers in 1906. Her parents also purchased a summer home there in 1909, and Jones spent every summer on the picturesque waterfront. She maintained ties to the community while studying graphic design and art in Boston, and throughout her long and distinguished career. Her Indian Shops, Gay Head, Massachusetts, 1940, is in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.