Neal Auction Louisiana Purchase 2015

Additional information at www.nealauction.com 37 169. William Aiken Walker (American/South Carolina, 1838‑1921) , “Levee, New Orleans”, oil on academy board, signed lower left, “Robert M. Hicklin, Jr., Inc., Spartanburg, South Carolina” and “Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, Mississippi” labels with title en verso, 12 in. x 6 1/8 in., framed. $12000/18000 Provenance: Robert M. Hicklin, Jr., Inc.; An Uptown New Orleans Private Collection. 170. William Aiken Walker (American/South Carolina, 1838‑1921) , “Male and Female Cotton Pickers in the Fields”, oil on academy board, signed lower left, partial “F.W. Devoe, Academy Board, N.Y.” label en verso, 11 1/2 in. x 9 in., antique frame. $8000/12000 Note: To be included in John Fowler’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of William Aiken Walker. 171. William Aiken Walker (American/South Carolina, 1838‑1921) , “Common Blue Crab”, oil on paper laid down, signed lower left, “The Arden Collection, Lafayette College, Easton. PA, 1983” exhibition label and “Christie’s, New York, Sept. 22, 1993, lot # 33” labels en verso, 15 3/4 in. x 11 3/4 in., framed with artist plaque. $20000/30000 Provenance: Private Collection, Savannah, GA. Note: To be included in John Fowler’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of William Aiken Walker. 168. William Aiken Walker (American/ South Carolina, 1838‑1921) , “House along the Gulf Coast”, 1870, oil on paper, signed and dated “Oct. 28(?), 1870” lower left, “Sotheby’s…, New York, Dec. 18, 1991, lot 63” labels en verso, 6 3/4 in. x 9 1/2 in., framed with artist plaque. $20000/30000 Provenance: Private Collection, Savannah, GA. Note: To be included in John Fowler’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of William Aiken Walker. Note: William Aiken Walker kept only one journal or day-book throughout his long career, during the period of his two-month sojourn in Cuba beginning on December 15, 1869. Following his last entry there, of February 13, 1870, he sailed shortly afterward for Charleston and New York; he also possibly made his only visit to Europe, presumably that spring. At the end of the year, an undated clipping from the Baltimore Sun recorded his European trip, and also that Walker “contributed two original pictures” to “the Exhibition.” Since a parallel clipping of December 1871 refers to another such show as the “second annual” exhibition of Baltimore artists, the presumption is that the earlier clipping may have been published in December 1870. An example of the two “small paintings” that Walker presented in that show is named by the newspaper as “One of the Attractions of the Sea Shore” (it represented a girl on a rock, gazing out to sea). Apart from these anchors of January- February and December, Walker’s life and works are undocumented for the entire remainder of 1870. Thus the fine and unique painting offered here affords both an important new date in Walker scholarship, and also the quite unexpected revelation that he was in fact enjoying the Gulf Coast on its inscribed date of October 28, 1870. Ref.: August P. Trovaioli and Roulhac B. Toledano, William Aiken Walker, Southern Genre Painter, 1st ed., Baton Rouge, 1972, 2nd rev. ed., Gretna, 2000; Cynthia Seibels and Robert M. Hicklin Jr., The Sunny South: Life and Art of William Aiken Walker , Spartanburg, 1995; Ray L. Bellande, Hotels and Tourist Homes of Ocean Springs , Mississippi, Ocean Springs, 1994, pp. 31-35, and 67.