$16,000
Estimate: $10,000 - $15,000
American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists
Auction: December 6, 2020 2:00:00 PM EDT
Inscribed 'BW' (circled) bottom right; also titled at center and with artist's hand-written note verso, pencil on lined notebook paper
9 1/4 x 6 7/8 in. (23.5 x 17.5cm)
Executed circa 1937.
Provenance
The Artist.
Acquired directly from the above.
Carlen Galleries Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Acquired directly from the above.
Collection of Vincent B. Murphy, Jr., New Jersey.
By descent in the family.
Private Collection, New Jersey
Exhibited
"I Tell my Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin," Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 21-April 17, 1994; also the Art Institute of Chicago, April 30-July 10, 1994; also the Cincinnati Art Museum, July 28-October 9, 1994; also the Baltimore Museum of Art, October 26, 1994-January 1, 1995; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 1-April 30, 1995 (traveling exhibition).
Literature
Judith E. Stein, I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin, an exhibition catalogue, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1993, pp. 96, 100, 104 (discussed), fig. 86 (illustrated p. 100).
Note
In 1937, Horace Pippin executed the portrait of Paul Bartram Dague (1898-1974). Just like the artist, Dague was a war veteran. He was originally active in the Charles F. Moran Post of the American Legion, while Pippin joined area black veterans in the Nathan Holmes Post, which he even commanded for a time. The present drawing served as a study for a larger painting, now in possession of the Chester County Historical Society in Wester Chester, Pennsylvania (as 1985.512). In the accompanying exhibition catalogue of "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin" (1994), Judith E. Stein explains: “Dague had been a private in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War I. His distinguished history of public service in Pennsylvania began in 1925 with the state’s Department of Highways. Between 1936 and 1946 he was Chester County’s Deputy Sheriff and Sheriff, after which he represented the area as its Republican Congressman from 1947 to 1966. Pippin and Dague crossed paths frequently because of their American Legion activities, the evident basis for the preparatory drawing and the Dague portrait (…) Dague’s wife and the Legion Post allegedly found the image unflattering. Pippin’s desire to honor his civic-minded friend was nonetheless sincere. A detail as simple as the Delaware Valley ladderback [sic] chair evokes the regional context of Dague’s public career and family history. The gavel suggests that he had some authority at a meeting or similar circumstance since it is the symbol of a post commander in the American legion, here represented by the insignia on the rectangular block. Hague held no office in his local Legion post at the time, although his Marine Corps dress uniform, complete with a rainbow-hued World War I Victory medal and a Marine Corps marksmanship medal, establishes his exemplary military service.“