During an auction preview recently, I was flipping through some framed paintings propped against a wall when I came upon one without a frame. It was a pencil drawing with a faded and worn mat that obstructed the artist’s name.
I lifted the mat from the drawing, eyed the signature and instantly realized that I’d made another smart find. It was signed Julius Bloch, and this was the second of his pencil drawings that I had come across in the last year. I purchased his “Dead Soldier” at another auction house a year ago, and before then, I had acquired several small drawings at yet another auction the year before. I seemed to be reaping what others were discarding of this noted artist’s works.
This one was titled “Barnegat Bay – 1930,” and it showed a grouping of buildings in an area on the Jersey coast way north of Atlantic City. Barnegat Bay is known for its commercial fishing, and its miles of shore, dunes, beaches and wetlands. It was likely pristine and natural when Bloch made his drawing, but today, impurities have flowed into its waters and studies are being conducted to find ways to save it.
Bloch, a Philadelphia artist, was a social realist who captured common working class and poor people on canvas. Although this drawing was devoid of people, the barebones of it still evoked their existence as laborers. With this new piece, I knew I had to have it for my collection. Click on the photo above for a full view.
But I wasn’t finishing looking. Flipping through a disparate group of works on a table not far away, I turned to a watercolor of a Haitian drummer and dancers that caught my eye. It was signed Durce, a name that I was not familiar with. The discovery of his work was similar to a find I had made earlier this year of eight small watercolors by veteran Haitian artists. I seemed to be bumping into as-yet-discovered-by-me Haitian artists whose works appealed to me. I was thrilled.
Much of the Haitian art I see at auction appears to have been made for tourists, so I’m very selective in what I buy. In fact, an auction-goer – noting my interest in Haitian art – offered to sell me a smaller drawing for $5. The piece, though, didn’t speak to me so I nicely declined.
But I was curious about this artist Dorce. Attached to the back of the watercolor was a 1982 sheet from Nader’s Art Gallery in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with a small bit of information about him and the painting. The artist’s name was listed as Martino Durce (or Dorce) and he apparently was born in 1943. He attended the Ecole Nationale Tertulien Guilbaud primary school and was a student of Joseph Tony “TiTonTon” Moise, who has exhibited worldwide.
The Dorce painting – whose style was labeled primitive – seemed to be from 1970.
Nader’s Gallery had one of the largest collections of primitive Haitian art and, like many other art institutions and galleries, was devastated by the earthquake in the country two years ago. The Nader Art Museum was also hit, but some works were saved and were being restored, according to a 2011 article.
The painting at auction apparently had been a gift, because the giver had written an inscription in ink on the back and dated it 1983.
Dorce’s name and examples of his works showed up pretty often in my Google search, but I could find out very little about him.
He illustrated the book “De’Monte Love” by Rodney Vance in 2007, the true story of a young Haitian boy caring for his siblings and friends after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Vance of Pasadena, CA, was compelled to write the book after hearing the boy’s story, he said, and asked his neighbor Dorce to illustrate it.
In an article in the magazine Arroyo Monthly in 2008, Dorce said that he had always turned down offers to illustrate children’s books but decided to do this one because he was touched by the child’s story.
