1940 depiction of dockworker expected to fetch $60,000+ at November 15 Texas art auction
DALLAS – The Longshoreman, Samuel A. Countee’s evocative, museum-quality 1940 masterpiece -- a prime example of Texas talent and historical importance -- is the premier painting in Heritage Auction’s Nov. 15 Texas Art Signature® Auction in Dallas, TX. It is expected to bring $60,000+ and joins highlights from the Kelly Fearing estate along with works by other important Texas artists Porfirio Salinas, Frank Reaugh, Robert William Wood and William A. Slaughter.
The Longshoreman is among Countee’s greatest achievements as a painter.
“This is a very important historical painting,” said Atlee Phillips, Director of Texas Art at Heritage, “as important as the best works of his Texas contemporaries, and most certainly a standout example of Countee’s Regionalism. The work is uniquely Texas in every light and shows why Countee was one of the finest early Texas artists active in the twentieth century.”
It is likely that the scene derives from the many dockworkers active in Houston docks, which would have been a familiar scene to Countee. It remains a bold statement on the power and potential of African-American men, despite the fact Countee produced the work during troubled times for African-Americans in East Texas.
“The Longshoreman represents a coming of age to full personhood, dignified and fully present, for African-Americans in the mid-20th Century,” said Texas art scholar James Baker. “It’s no doubt influenced by Joe Louis and his victories in the boxing rings of the late 1930s and through the ‘40s, which gave African-Americans a great sense of pride and new visions of what was possible.”
The painting will be the subject of the Nov. 14 2nd Tuesdays @ Slocum, Heritage’s free monthly lecture series held at its Design District Annex, 1518 Slocum Street. Scholar James Graham Baker will explore The Longshoreman and Countee’s perseverance during an era of racial adversity.
Biographical information from Swann Galleries:
Biographical information from Swann Galleries:
Samuel Countee (1909-1959) was born in Marshall, TX, and grew up in Houston. He studied art through high school and college--he graduated from Bishop College in Marshall in 1934. His career was launched with his painting Little Brown Boy's acceptance to an exhibition of the Harmon Foundation in 1933 and later published in Alain Locke's seminal The Negro in Art. The Harmon Foundation also awarded him a scholarship to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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