Oct 04, 2018 - Sale 2487

Sale 2487 - Lot 142

Price Realized: $ 81,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 60,000 - $ 90,000
HUGHIE LEE-SMITH (1915 - 1999)
End of Act One.

Oil on linen canvas, 1987. 813x864 mm; 32x34 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.

Provenance: June Kelly Gallery, New York, with the label on the frame back; private collection, New York (1989).

Exhibited: Hughie Lee-Smith: New Paintings, June Kelly Gallery, New York, September 19 - October 17, 1987; Three Masters: Eldzier Cortor, Hughie Lee-Smith, Archibald John Motley, Jr., Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, May 22 - July 17, 1988; Two Master Painters: Clarence Carter & Hughie Lee-Smith, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Summit, NJ, September 13 - October 25, 1992; Hughie Lee-Smith: A Retrospective, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, Maine, July 1 - August 1, 1997 (traveling exhibition); Hughie Lee-Smith Retrospective Exhibition, the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ, November 5, 1988 - January 2, 1989 (traveling exhibition); including, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, July 2 - September 24, 1989; Hughie Lee-Smith: An Overview, 1949 - 1995, The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey, October 15 - November 26, 1995.

Illustrated: Corrine Jennings, Three Masters: Eldzier Cortor, Hughie Lee-Smith, Archibald John Motley, Jr., fig. 13, p. 25; Michael Culver, Hughie Lee-Smith: A Retrospective; Leslie King-Hammond, Hughie Lee-Smith, plate 48; p. 80; Michael Brenson, Hughie Lee-Smith: An Overview, 1949 - 1995, p. 15.

End of Act One is an excellent example of the artist's late series of paintings depicting musicians and actors in a staged environment.