Haywood Rivers Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Haywood Rivers Art Value Price Guide

Sep. 12, 2024
Haywood Rivers, 1922-2002, Abstract Building, Oil on Canvas
Est: $3,000 - $5,000
Haywood Rivers 1922-2002 Abstract Building Oil on Canvas Signed l.r. "H. Rivers"
Nye & Company
Sep. 12, 2024
Haywood Rivers, 1922-2002, Figures and Shapes, Mixed Media on Canvas
Est: $3,000 - $5,000
Haywood Rivers 1922-2002 Figures and Shapes Mixed Media on Canvas Signed l.r.
Nye & Company
Oct. 27, 2022
HAYWOOD (BILL) RIVERS, American (1922-2001), "Composition with Movement - Interiors, 1953", oil on canvas, 35 1/2 x 31 1/2 inches
Est: $3,000 - $5,000
HAYWOOD (BILL) RIVERS American, (1922-2001) "Composition with Movement - Interiors, 1953" oil on canvas unsigned
Shannon's
Jun. 14, 2022
HAYWOOD BILL RIVERS THICK IMPASTO MODERNIST PAINTING. SIGNED H BILL RIVERS
Est: $1,200 - $1,800
Haywood Bill RIVERS Thick Impasto Modernist painting. Signed H Bill Rivers Dimensions: H: 35 inches: W: 37 inches ---
Uniques & Antiques
Mar. 31, 2022
HAYWOOD “BILL” RIVERS (1922 - 2001) The Dance.
Est: $15,000 - $25,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2001) The Dance. Oil on linen canvas, circa 1955-59. 635x762 mm; 25x30 inches. Signed in pencil across the verso. Provenance: the artist, Paris; James and Laura M. Kleege, New York; thence by descent, private collection, Indiana; private collection, New York, acquired at Swann Galleries, February 3, 2010. Exhibited: Louis B. Comfort Tiffany Foundation, New York, with the label on the frame back. With the artist's name, address, the artist's agent, Gallery Parma, and its address and the name of the owner, James Kleege, handwritten on the printed label. Parma Gallery exhibited other abstract painters such as George Dunbar, Robert Klippel and Felrath Hines in the mid to late 1950s. The Dance is a wonderful mid-century abstraction by this overlooked artist. This is the earliest abstract painting by Haywood Rivers that we have been able to locate. After returning from Paris in 1952, the artist continued to be inspired by Henri Matisse, which is particularly evident in his abstract painting with its flat areas of pattern and color.
Swann Auction Galleries
Jun. 04, 2020
HAYWOOD “BILL” RIVERS (1922 - 2001) The Dance.
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
HAYWOOD 'BILL' RIVERS (1922 - 2001) The Dance. Oil on linen canvas, circa 1955-59. 635x762 mm; 25x30 inches. Signed in pencil across the verso. Provenance: the artist, Paris; James and Laura M. Kleege, New York; thence by descent, private collection, Indiana; private collection, New York, acquired at Swann Galleries, February 3, 2010. Exhibited: Louis B. Comfort Tiffany Foundation, New York, with the label on the frameback. With the artist's name, address, the artist's agent, Gallery Parma, and its address and the name of the owner, James Kleege, handwritten on the printed label. Parma Gallery exhibited other abstract painters such as George Dunbar, Robert Klippel and Felrath Hines in the mid to late 1950s. The Dance is a wonderful mid-century abstraction by this overlooked artist. This is the earliest abstract painting by Haywood Rivers that we have been able to locate. After returning from Paris in 1952, the artist continued to be inspired by Henri Matisse, which is particularly evident in his abstract painting with its flat areas of pattern and color.
Swann Auction Galleries
Oct. 08, 2019
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2001) Dance Around a Flower.
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2001) Dance Around a Flower. Oil on linen canvas, 1962. 647x762 mm; 25 1/2x30 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left. Provenance: private collection, New York; private collection. This densely colorful canvas by Haywood "Bill" Rivers is a wonderful and scarce example of the artist's mid-career abstraction from the early 1960s. It displays the continued influence of his North Carolina childhood quilt-making on his painting after his return from France to the U.S. The geometric patterns and grid composition of the quilts became the subject of his abstract paintings in the 1960s. At the time, Rivers became closely associated with a group of artists living and working on the lower East Side of New York, including Emilio Cruz, Joe Overstreet, Bob Thompson and Jack Whitten. Rivers was included in the recent exhibition of expatriate artists Lost, Loose and Loved: Foreign Artists in Paris 1944–1968 at the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, November 22, 2018 - April 22, 2019.
Swann Auction Galleries
Apr. 05, 2018
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1942 - 2002) Untitled.
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1942 - 2002) Untitled. Watercolor and gouache on wove paper, circa 1980. 406x292 mm; 16x11 1/2 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left. Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New York.
Swann Auction Galleries
Oct. 05, 2017
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Untitled.
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Untitled. Oil on cotton canvas, circa 1968-69. 978x1346 mm; 38 1/2x53 inches. Signed in oil, lower right. Provenance: the artist, New York (1969); private collection, New York; private collection, Ohio. This dramatic canvas is the largest painting by the artist to come to auction, and a significant transitional work. In this untitled canvas, Haywood "Bill" Rivers' completely deconstructs the formalism found in his 1960s abstract paintings. The geometric patterns and grid composition of the quilts that inspired his abstract works are broken up with expressive and painterly passages of color. The geometric patterns eventually become the subjects for the more thickly painted, hard edge abstractions that Rivers returned to in the early 1970s.
Swann Auction Galleries
Apr. 06, 2017
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Untitled.
Est: $7,000 - $10,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Untitled. Oil on burlap canvas, circa 1970. 610x762 mm; 24x28 inches. Provenance: the estate of Haywood "Bill" Rivers; thence by descent to a private collection, California. This untitled canvas is a wonderful and scarce example of Haywood "Bill" Rivers'' mid-career abstraction displaying the influence of his childhood quilt-making. For Rivers, the making of quilts eventually became a metaphor for painting, and his style would become increasingly abstract, inspired by the appearance, the construction, and the memory of making quilts. Similar to the work of Rose Piper, River''s works were, in the words of art historian Ann Gibson, "about the making of art." Their patterns ultimately became the subjects for these thickly painted abstractions that Rivers developed in the early 1970s.
Swann Auction Galleries
Apr. 06, 2017
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Untitled.
Est: $7,000 - $10,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Untitled. Oil on linen canvas, 1951. 457x273 mm; 18x10 3/4 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left. Provenance: the estate of Haywood "Bill" Rivers; thence by descent to a private collection, California. Haywood "Bill" Rivers painted this charming canvas during his Paris period, recalling domestic scenes from his family home in Morven, NC. Rivers left his family as a young teen and moved to Baltimore; he later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League from 1946-49. Rivers soon left for Paris after being awarded a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1948. There Rivers joined the collaborative Galerie Huite, an exhibition space founded by Robert Rosenwald, Julius''s grandson, for American painters in Paris, including Al Held and Jules Olitski. He also studied at the École du Louvre in Paris from 1950-52. Rivers went on to receive other awards for his work, including the John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1952 while his paintings became more abstract. His two solo exhibitions--in 1948, at the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art, and in 1983, at the Ann Weber Gallery in Georgetown, ME--bookend a long, distinguished career.
Swann Auction Galleries
Apr. 07, 2016
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) The Birds.
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) The Birds. Oil on linen canvas, circa 1948-51. 560x320 mm; 22x13 inches. Provenance: the artist, Paris; James and Laura M. Kleege, New York; thence by descent to a private collection; private collection, New York. Inscribed with the artist's name, titled and Laura Kleege's name and New York address in ink on stretcher bars. James Kleege, New York painter and printmaker in Stanley W. Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris, befriended Haywood "Bill" Rivers during his time in Paris. The family supplied this image of the artist painting this work. Haywood "Bill" Rivers left his family as a young teen and moved to Baltimore. He later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League from 1946-48. Rivers left for Paris in 1949 and joined the cooperative Galerie Huit. He then studied at the École du Louvre in Paris from 1950-52. Rivers went on to receive many awards for his work, including the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1948 and the John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1952. His two solo exhibitions--in 1948, at the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art, and in 1983 at the Ann Weber Gallery in Georgetown, ME--bookend a long, distinguished career. Today, his works are found in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and La Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. The Baltimore Museum's The Drape Maker and Tailor Shop, both acquired from his 1948 exhibition, were included in the traveling museum exhibition, A Force for Change: African American Art and the Rosenwald Fund.
Swann Auction Galleries
Dec. 15, 2015
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Still Life.
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Still Life. Oil on linen canvas, circa 1946-49. 457x432 mm; 18x17 inches. Provenance: the collection of Harry N. Abrams, New York: private collection, New York (1971). This beautiful still life is a scarce example of Haywood "Bill" Rivers's brief but celebrated late 1940s figurative period. Influenced by seeing both Van Gogh and Horace Pippen's work at the Baltimore Museum, Rivers depicted domestic scenes from his family home in Morven, NC. This modernist painting has charming elements of Impressionism and Japonisme with the flatness of the composition, and its elements of sunflowers in a glazed bowl and the framed Japanese woodcut on the wall. Rivers left his family as a young teen and moved to Baltimore; he later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League from 1946-49. Rivers soon left for Paris after being awarded a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1948. There Rivers joined the collaborative Galerie Huite, an exhibition space founded by Robert Rosenwald, Julius's grandson, for American painters in Paris, including Al Held and Jules Olitski. He also studied at the École du Louvre in Paris from 1950-52. Rivers went on to receive other awards for his work, including the John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1952 while his paintings became more abstract. His two solo exhibitions--in 1948, at the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art, and in 1983, at the Ann Weber Gallery in Georgetown, ME--bookend a long, distinguished career. Today, his works are in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and La Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. The Baltimore Museum's The Drape Maker and Tailor Shop, both acquired from his 1948 exhibition, were included in the 2009-10 traveling museum exhibition, A Force for Change: African American Art and the Rosenwald Fund. Schulman p. 140.
Swann Auction Galleries
Oct. 07, 2010
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Untitled (Woman in Armchair, Smoking Pipe).
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) Untitled (Woman in Armchair, Smoking Pipe). Oil on canvas, circa 1948-50. 457x406 mm; 18x16 inches. Signed in ink on the verso, upper edge. Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection. This charming painting is a scarce example of Haywood "Bill" Rivers's brief but celebrated late 1940s figurative period. Influenced by Horace Pippen, Rivers recalls a strong female figure from his quilt-making family in Morven, NC. He left his family as a young teen and moved to Baltimore; he later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League from 1946-48. In 1949, Rivers left for Paris and joined the cooperative Galerie Huit. He then studied at the École du Louvre in Paris from 1950-52. Rivers went on to receive many awards for his work, including the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1948 and the John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1952. His two solo exhibitions--in 1948, at the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art, and in 1983 at the Ann Weber Gallery in Georgetown, ME--bookend a long, distinguished career. Today, his works are in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and La Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. The Baltimore Museum's The Drape Maker and Tailor Shop, both acquired from his 1948 exhibition, were included in the 2009-10 traveling museum exhibition, A Force for Change: African American Art and the Rosenwald Fund.
Swann Auction Galleries
Apr. 07, 2010
Haywood (Bill) Rivers
Est: $2,000 - $3,000
Untitled (Church) Signed "H. Rivers" on the reverse.
Phillips
Feb. 23, 2010
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) The Dance.
Est: $15,000 - $25,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) The Dance. Oil on canvas, circa 1955-59. 635x762 mm; 25x30 inches. Signed in pencil across the verso. Provenance: the artist, Paris; James and Laura M. Kleege, New York; thence by descent to the current owner. Exhibited: Louis B. Comfort Tiffany Foundation, New York, with the label on the frameback. With the artist's name, address, the artist's agent, Gallery Parma, and its address and the name of the owner, James Kleege, handwritten on the printed label. Parma Gallery exhibited other abstract painters such as George Dunbar, Robert Klippel and Felrath Hines in the mid to late 1950s. The Dance is a wonderful mid-century abstraction by this overlooked artist. This is the earliest abstract painting by Haywood Rivers that we have been able to locate. After returning from Paris in 1952, the artist continued to be inspired by Henri Matisse, which is particularly evident in his abstract painting with its flat areas of pattern and color.
Swann Auction Galleries
Feb. 23, 2010
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) The Birds.
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) The Birds. Oil on canvas, circa 1948-51. 560x320 mm; 22x13 inches. 6-inch vertical mark, lower center. Provenance: the artist, Paris; James and Laura M. Kleege, New York; thence by descent to the current owner. Inscribed with the artist's name, title and Laura Kleege's name and New York address in ink on stretcher bars. James Kleege, New York painter and printmaker in Stanley W. Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris, befriended Haywood "Bill" Rivers during his time in Paris. The family supplied this image of the artist painting this work. This is the first of the very scarce, early figurative work of Haywood "Bill" Rivers to come to auction--we have located only three other figurative works from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Haywood "Bill" Rivers left his family as a young teen and moved to Baltimore. He later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League from 1946-48. Rivers left for Paris in 1949 and joined the cooperative Galerie Huit. He then studied at the École du Louvre in Paris from 1950-52. Rivers went on to receive many awards for his work, including the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1948 and the John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1952. His two solo exhibitions--in 1948, at the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art, and in 1983 at the Ann Weber Gallery in Georgetown, ME--bookend a long, distinguished career. Today, his works are found in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and La Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. The Baltimore Museum's The Drape Maker and Tailor Shop, both acquired from his 1948 exhibition, are currently included in the traveling museum exhibition, A Force for Change: African American Art and the Rosenwald Fund.
Swann Auction Galleries
Feb. 17, 2009
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) The Little Patch.
Est: $2,000 - $3,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002) The Little Patch. Oil on canvas, 1971. 407x407 mm; 16x16 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left recto. Signed, titled and dated in oil, verso. Provenance: private New Jersey collection. We have not found any previous auction records for the work of Haywood "Bill" Rivers. This small canvas is a wonderful example of the artist's mid-career abstraction and the influence of his childhood quilt-making. Born in rural Norven, NC, Haywood "Bill" Rivers left his family as a young teen and moved to Baltimore, MD. He later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League from 1946-48, and then at the École du Louvre in Paris from 1950-52. Rivers went on to receive many awards for his work - including the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1948, and the Jay Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1952. Rivers exhibited a similar painting, Eclipses, the year before at the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston. His two solo exhibitions - in 1942, at the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art, and in 1983 at the Ann Weber Gallery in Georgetown, ME - bookend a long, distinguished career. His works are found today in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and Le Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris.
Swann Auction Galleries