?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000
NORMAN LEWIS (1909 - 1979) Under Sea.
Oil on linen canvas, 1953. 864x1473 mm; 34x58 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right recto. Titled in pencil, upper stretcher bar verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; collection of Oral Lovell, Wellesley, MA; thence by descent to the current owner. Oral Lovell was a significant collector of Norman Lewis' works; she was his close friend from 1959 to 1965. They met through a circle of New York City artists, including Romare Bearden and Charles Alston.
Exhibited: Norman Lewis, Willard Gallery, New York, NY October 5 - 30, 1954.
This mid-career abstraction was one of 15 oil paintings in the artist's fifth solo gallery exhibition at the Willard Gallery. Migrating Birds, 1954, in the same exhibition, won the prestigious Carnegie Institute prize for painting that year and was acquired by the museum.
