Lot 14

AUGUSTA CHRISTINE FELLS SAVAGE (American 1892-1962) Gamin, circa 1930 Polychromed plaster Impressed on verso Height 9.25 inches

Estimate: $13,000-$17,000

Augusta Savage was one of the most influential (and selfless) forces in the African American Harlem art movement of the 1920’s and 30’s. Augusta Fells was born in the brick-making town of Green Cove Springs Florida in 1892. She began modeling animal figures out of the moist red clay of Green Cove, despite the lack of support from her father, a strict Methodist minister who viewed her animal sculptures as borderline “graven images”. At the age of 15 she married John T. Moore, the father of her only child, a daughter Irene. A few years later Moore died. Augusta attended Tallahassee State National School and in about 1915 Augusta moved to West Palm Beach. There she met and married James Savage whom she later divorced. Savage thrived artistically in West Palm Beach, receiving local encouragement and prizes. A prize awarded to her at the state fair inspired Savage to raise the necessary funds to go to New York and obtain training as an artist. On the eve of her departure she penned the following poem to early supporter George G. Currie: “At the forks of life’s high road alone I stand, And the hour of my temptation is at hand, In my soul’s Gethsemane I still have your faith in me, And it strengthens me to know you understand.” In 1921 she enrolled in the Cooper Union fouryear sculpture course and supported herself by taking in laundry. Not long after arriving in New York, savage received commissions to sculpt portraits of African-American leaders such as W.E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, James Weldon Johnson and Marcus Garvey. Due to the quality of her work, in 1923 Savage was chosen to represent some 100 American women selected to attend a summer program at Fontainebleau, outside Paris. However, on the basis of her race, the French subsequently refused her application. It was also at this time that she married for the third and final time, but this husband, Robert L. Poston, died the following year. Despite frequent setbacks Savage continued to work in the 1920’s. On the success of her previous commissions and on the strength of a particularly poignant work titled “Gamin”, which debuted in 1929 to rave reviews, Savage received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship that enabled her to finally study in Paris (1929-1931). Upon her return to depression-laden America in 1932, Augusta established the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts to provide art training and education for African Americans. She later became the first director of the WPA-funded Harlem Community Art Center, which played a crucial role in the development of many young black artists. Also at this time she became the first African-American elected to the National Association of Woman Painters and Sculptors. She also fought successfully for the inclusion of black artists in WPA projects. In the late 1930’s Savage was commissioned to create a sculpture for the 1939 New York Worlds Fair. The piece, inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, became one of her best known. Unfortunately, it along with so many other works by Savage, was never cast in durable materials and was lost. In the early 1940’s Savage moved to an old chicken farm near the Woodstock art colony in upstate New York; yet she produced no more art nor made any effort to interact with the many artists there. What she wanted, she told friends, was complete isolation. In the late 1950’s her health deteriorated and in 1962 she died, essentially penniless. Sadly much of Augusta Savages work has not survived. Firstly she could rarely afford to cast her pieces in bronze. Subsequently the majority of her works that do still exist today are those, like the offered lot, which were cast in plaster. Additionally, it is believed by some, that most or all of her works that were exhibited at the “American Negro Exposition” Tanner Galleries, Chicago, Illinois in July of 1940, never made it back to Savage, or as some have speculated, were perhaps even destroyed by Savage herself. The offered lot, “Gamin”, depicts an attractive, streetwise young man and is considered her best-known and most successful work. The bust was actually based on the artists young nephew, Ellis Ford, however the image of the savvy youth could have been any of the many similar youths who roamed the streets of Harlem. In 1967 Gamin was voted the most popular of 250 works shown at the “Evolution of Afro- American Artists” exhibition at the City College of New York.