| The
Hitchhiker
-
1937, Color Serigraph.
Williams 1. Edition
unknown, small. Signed in ink, in the image, upper left. Inscribed To
Arnold from Bob in pencil, lower right.
Image size 16 13/16
x 13 1/8 inches (427 x 333 mm); sheet size 22 3/4 x 17 inches (578 x 432
mm).
A fine impression,
with fresh colors, on cream wove paper; full margins (1 5/8 to 3 3/4 inches).
Soft creasing in the outside margins, well away from the image, otherwise
in excellent condition. Ex. collection renowned photographer Arnold Newman.
After the 1936 painting
The Hitchhiker, one of Gwathmey's earliest surviving oil paintings;
Gwathmey destroyed most of his early work in 1938. Judd Tully, a journalist
who interviewed Gwathmey in 1985, says the painting is autobiographical:
"The shirt-sleeved figure in the foreground, with thumb to the sky,
could well be the painter, heading back home to Richmond" –Hot
Off the Press, Tyler & Walker, Ed., 43.
Illustrated in:
Hot Off the Press: Prints and Politics, Linda Tyler and Barry Walker,
Tamarind Institute, 1994; American Screenprints: 1930s-1960s,
Clifford Ackley and Shelly Langdale, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1991;
and Order and Enigma; American Art Between the Two Wars, Sarah
Clark-Langager, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 1984; Pressed In
Time: American Prints 1905-1950, Henry E. Huntington Library and
Art Gallery, San Marino, 2007; The American Scene: Prints from Hopper
to Pollock, Stephen Coppel, The British Museum, 2008 (back cover
illustration).
Exhibited: Pressed
In Time: American Prints 1905-1950, The Huntington Library and Art
Gallery, San Marino, 2007-2008; The American Scene: Prints from Hopper
to Pollock, The British Museum, 2008.
Collection: Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA,
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Reba and Dave Williams.
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