The disappointment in my friend’s Valorie’s voice was palpable. She had missed the amazing oil painting of a guitar player by an African American artist named Samuel Countee. It was hanging on a wall near the foot of a stairwell at Swann Auction Galleries in New York, nearly hidden from view.
I had seen it on the Swann website, and had looked for it when I got to the preview of the auction house’s twice yearly African American Fine Art auction recently. I had never heard of Countee, but that wasn’t a surprise. I’m constantly meeting new artists through their works – at Swann and mom-and-pop auction houses.
Valorie didn’t see Countee’s painting – titled “My Guitar” – until it showed on the TV monitor during the auction. “Look at that guitar,” the auctioneer said lightheartedly to get the bids aflowing. It didn’t take much, though, because the image was powerful, the guitarist looking so natural and comfortable with himself.
Later, Valorie said that she would’ve bidded $20,000 for it – I wasn’t sure if she was joking or serious. The painting sold for $85,000.
It had a very distinguished provenance: The auction catalog showed the painting hanging on a wall among works by other African American artists at the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas. It was said to have been the most popular work there.
Countee was one of those little-known African American artists who never really reached the heights of an Aaron Douglas or Hale Woodruff, who were his contemporaries. Like them, he exhibited in the Harmon Foundation displays of African American art in the first half of the 20th century.
His painting “Little Brown Boy’ was in Harmon’s first exhibit in 1933, and he submitted works in the annual exhibitions over the next two years. I could not find that painting on the web, but I did find another – a lovely oil painting called “American Dock Worker” from 1940.
Very little appears to be known about Countee’s life. He was born in Marshall, TX, in 1909, and studied at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where he was said to have won prizes of $5 and $10 for at least two of his works.
He exhibited at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 1936, the Howard University Gallery of Art in 1937 and Atlanta University in 1940.
Later, his works were included in exhibitions at the High Museum in Atlanta in 1973 and Fisk University in 1976. He was mentioned in Alain Locke’s “The Negro in Art” in 1940.
By 1955, he was teaching and painting portraits in the New York area. He painted murals in churches in Houston and Hempstead, NY, where he lived. Fisk University has a painting called “The Lamp.”
Countee was credited with creating a mural above the fireplace of the Black Officers’ Club at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, around 1943-1945. The mural showed a man and woman in a pastoral setting, enjoying each other’s company.
His signature on the mural apparently was blurred, and it took some investigating by research archaeologist Dr. Steven D. Smith to figure it out. Interest in determining the artist was sparked when the mural was restored in 1995. Countee had joined the military in 1942, and was a staff sergeant at the time the mural was done. In fact, he was among a number of African Americans who painted murals in black officers’ clubs to lift the spirits of the soldiers.
In 1936, Countee’s “My Guitar” was among 73 artworks in two galleries in the Hall of Negro Life at the Texas Centennial. The hall was built with funding wrangled from the government by black groups in the state. It showed off the contributions of African Americans in Texas and the nation in education, fine arts, health, agriculture, mechanical arts, and business. There were also live performances by blacks and other groups.
French-born artist Raoul Josset sculpted a figure in broken chains in a seal stationed over the exterior door, and Douglas created four murals – “Into Bondage,” now owned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and “Aspirations,” at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The two others were apparently lost.
The Harmon Foundation loaned sculptures, paintings and other works from its collection. The artists represented included Henry Ossawa Tanner, Palmer Hayden, Laura Wheeler Waring, Malvin Gray Johnson, Richmond Barthe, Sam Brown, Hilda Wilkinson and Sargent Johnson.
