The Hitchhiker - 1937, Color Serigraph.

Williams 1. Edition unknown but small. Signed in ink, in the image, lower right.

Image size 16 3/4 x 13 1/8 inches (425 x 333 mm); sheet size 21 1/2 x 17 inches (546 x 432 mm).

A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper; full margins (1 5/8 to 2 5/8 inches). Light toning to the paper within a previous mat opening, otherwise in excellent condition. Scarce.

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, confirms that 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.

Literature: 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.

Collections: Boston Museum of Fine Arts, British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, National Gallery of Art.

Created when the country was still in the throes of the Great Depression, the work depicts the social inequalities of the time, contrasting the plight of the hitchhikers with the lives of the affluent, promoted in the background billboards. Gwathmey's use of flat color and graphic simplification, emulating the imagery of consumerism and popular culture, predates that of the Pop-Art movement by almost 20 years.

$9000.

Rural Home Front - 1942, Color Serigraph.

Williams 2. Edition 100. Signed in ink, in the image, upper left.

Image size 10 1/4 x 18 1/4 inches (260 x 464 mm); sheet size 14 1/4 x 21 1/2 inches (362 x 546 mm).

A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper; full margins (1 1/2 to 2 1/4 inches); minor scuffing in the image, visible in raking light; soft creasing across the bottom left image corner; otherwise in good condition.

This work received national recognition after winning the serigraph prize in the 1943 competition "America at War, Artists for Victory". Gwathmey's print was entered in the "Heroes of the Home Front" category. The infant in the image is the artist's son, Charles Gwathmey.

Literature: American Prize Prints of the 20th Century, Albert Reese, American Artists Group, Inc.,1949; American Screenprints, Reba and Dave Williams, National Academy of Design, 1987; Hot off the Press: Prints and Politics, Linda Tyler and Barry Walker, Tamarind Institute, 1994.

Collections: Butler Institute of American Art; Library of Congress; MoMA; National Museum of American Art; Reba and Dave Williams.

SOLD

End of Day - 1944, Color Serigraph.

Williams 4. Edition unknown. Signed in ink, in the image, lower left.

Image size 12 1/4 x 14 inches (311 x 356 mm); sheet size 15 1/2 x 18 inches (394 x 457 mm).

A fine, clean impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper; margins (1 to 2 1/4 inches). Mat line in the margins, 1/4 inch away from the image; a small loss in the bottom left sheet edge, well away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition.

Literature: Prints and Their Creators, A World History, Carl Zigrosser, Crown Publishers Inc., 1974. Hot Off the Press: Prints and Politics, Linda Tyler and Barry Walker, Tamarind Institute, 1994.

Included in the fourth annual exhibition of the National Serigraph Society, 1944. Noted in Serigraph Quarterly, May 1946 and February, 1948.

Non-Fiction - 1945, Color Serigraph.

Williams 5. Edition unknown. Signed in ink, in the image, lower left.

Image size 17 1/2 x 13 7/8 inches (445 x 352 mm); sheet size 23 x 17 inches (584 x 432 mm).

A fine impression, with fresh colors, on heavy buff wove paper; full margins (1 1/2 to 3 3/4 inches), in very good condition.

After the 1941 painting Non-Fiction, which was illustrated in the ACA Gallery catalogue of 1946, loaned by the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. In 1951 the painting was acquired from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica by the University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, where it remains.

Literature: Hot Off the Press: Prints and Politics, Linda Tyler and Barry Walker, Tamarind Institute, 1994; Life of the People: Realist Prints and Drawings from the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collection, 1912-1948, Library of Congress, 1999. Exhibited at the Library of Congress, 1999-2000.

Collection: Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery.

$4700.

Topping Tobacco - 1947, Color Serigraph.

Williams 7. Edition 300. Signed in ink, in the image, lower left.

Image size 13 1/4 x 8 7/8 inches (337 x 225 mm); sheet size 16 1/2 x 12 3/4 inches (419 x 324 mm).

A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper; with good margins (1 1/2 to 2 inches). Fingerprints and minor surface stains, verso, otherwise in excellent condition.

Published by National Serigraph Society. Illustrated in:Serigraph Quarterly, May 1948; Print Quarterly III, "The Early History of the Screenprint," December 1986, Reba and Dave Williams; Hot Off the Press: Prints and Politics, Linda Tyler and Barry Walker, Tamarind Institute, 1994; Pressed In Time: American Prints 1905-1950, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, 2007.

Exhibited: Pressed In Time: American Prints 1905-1950, The Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, 2007-2008.

Collections: Butler Institute of American Art, Reba and Dave Williams.

SOLD

Tobacco Farmers - 1947, Color Serigraph.

Williams 8. Edition 300. Signed in ink, in the image, lower left.

Image size 13 9/16 x 10 1/2 inches (344 x 267 mm); sheet size 15 5/16 x 13 inches (389 x 330 mm).

A fine impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper, with full margins, in excellent condition.

Published by National Serigraph Society. Illustrated in: Serigraph Quarterly, August 1947; Hot Off the Press: Prints and Politics, Linda Tyler and Barry Walker, Tamarind Institute, 1994.

Collections: Butler Institute of American Art, Reba and Dave Williams.

SOLD

Ring-Around-A-Rosy - 1945, Color Serigraph.

Williams 10. Edition 200. Signed in ink, in the image, upper left.

Image size 12 3/4 x 15 7/8 inches (324 x 403 mm); sheet size 16 x 20 inches (406 x 508 mm).

A fine,clean impression, with fresh colors, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 3/8 to 2 1/2 inches). Overall slight toning to the paper; scattered scuffing to the image surface, visible in raking light, otherwise in excellent condition.

Published by National Serigraph Society. Illustrated in Hot Off the Press: Prints and Politics, Linda Tyler and Barry Walker, Tamarind Institute, 1994.

Collections: Butler Institute of American Art, Reba and Dave Williams.

SOLD

Farmer's Wife (The Grandmother) - 1954, Color Serigraph.

Williams 12. Edition 200. Signed in ink, in the image, upper right. Annotated Edition 200 in pencil, in the image, lower left.

Image size 17 1/8 x 13 1/8 inches (435 x 332 mm); sheet size 21 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches (546 x 445 mm).

A fine, clean impression, with fresh colors, on heavy cream wove paper; full margins (2 to 2 1/8 inches). Scattered scuffing to the image surface, visible in raking light, otherwise in excellent condition.

Literature: Hot Off the Press: Prints and Politics, Linda Tyler and Barry Walker, Tamarind Institute, 1994.

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

SOLD