?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
ROMARE BEARDEN (1911 - 1988) Untitled (Three Figures Seated at a Table).
Watercolor, brush and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1946-47. 444x572 mm; 17 1/2x22 1/2 inches. Signed and dedicated "To Herbert From" in ink, lower right.
Provenance: ACA Gallery, New York, with the label on the frame back; Seymour Meyer, Great Neck, NY; private collection, NY.
This wonderfully fresh and vibrant watercolor is a very strong example from Romare Bearden's Rabelais series. Inspired by François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel 16th century satire, Bearden's watercolors suggest an allusion to the ribaldry of the period. A group of 18 works were shown at the Kootz Gallery from Feburary 24 to March 15, 1947. Myron Schwartzman described two kinds of scenes in the series: "drinking, carousing, and dancing on the one hand; hunting on the other," with titles drawn from Rabelais that suggest the sense of joie de vivre found in the works. Schwartzman p. 149.
