Lot 744: William R. Hollingsworth (American/Mississippi)

William R. Hollingsworth (American/Mississippi, 1910-1944), "Mississippi Landscape with Train Tracks and Telephone Poles" and "Mississippi Town with Shotgun Houses", 1944, double-sided watercolor on paper, each initialed and dated lower right, 22 in. x 14 in. Provenance: Acquired by a Virginia collector while visiting relatives in Jackson, MS, c. 1944; thence by descent Note: Hollingsworth is best known for his watercolors of the countryside near Jackson and for his depictions of African Americans in their environs. The double-sided work offered here has a view from each of these favored themes, with one side showing a vast landscape with power lines and a train track, and the other side a black man within a group of shotgun houses. In 1937 Hollingsworth won the William Tuthill Prize at an international watercolor show at the Art Institute of Chicago. Unfortunately, his artistic output was limited to a mere tenyears, as the artist took his life in the summer of 1944, the year the watercolors offered here were painted.
Starting Bid: $1000