PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTION, CINCINNATI
Lot 26
MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS(1904-1957)Woman with Basket
15 November 2023, 15:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$28,160 inc. premium
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Flannery Gallagher
Cataloguer
Emily Wilson
Specialist/Head of Sale
Carly Ellsworth
Cataloguer
MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS (1904-1957)
Woman with Basket
signed 'Covarrubias' (lower right)
gouache and watercolor on paper
11 9/16 x 7 3/8 in (29.4 x 18.8 cm)
Executed circa 1926-1927
signed 'Covarrubias' (lower right)
gouache and watercolor on paper
11 9/16 x 7 3/8 in (29.4 x 18.8 cm)
Executed circa 1926-1927
Footnotes
The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Anahí Luna.
Provenance
Francis Welch Crowninshield Collection, New York (possibly acquired from the artist).
(possibly) M. Knoedler & Co., New York, no. 61475.
The Little Gallery, Hotel Alms, Cincinnati.
Rachel Warrington Pease Collection, Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Thence by descent to the present owners.
Exhibited
(possibly) Cambridge, The Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, American Cartoonists and Caricaturists, December 6-20, 1929.
Literature
M. Covarrubias, Negro Drawings, New York, 1927, no. 55 (illustrated).
Within a year of Miguel Covarrubias arriving in New York City, at just nineteen years old, he planted himself in the city's arts and literary scene by contributing weekly to publications such as The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. During his association with Vanity Fair, from 1924 to 1936, Covarrubias's caricatures and illustrations filled the pages of the magazine with the people and cultures that inspired him. It was through this he was introduced to Frank Crowninshield, founder and editor of Vanity Fair, who likely acquired the present lot directly from the artist. Crowninshield immediately understood the talent Covarrubias possessed and placed his work regularly on the cover of his publication. In an introduction to a publication of Covarrubias's drawings, Crowninshield praises the artist's ability to capture the human spirit. He states, "We feel, not only humor, truth, and a master of three-dimensions form, but a rarer quality, which, for want of a better word, we may call 'aliveness,' a feeling of actuality" (quoted in M. Covarrubias, Negro Drawings, New York, 1927, p. 3). Certainly this "aliveness" is what captured the viewers of Vanity Fair and is what continues to make Miguel Covarrubias' work universally relatable today.
