Lot 82: ALBERT EDWARD YORK (1926-2009) Begonia Plant in Flower Pot signed ‘A. Yo

ALBERT EDWARD YORK (1926-2009) Begonia Plant in Flower Pot signed ‘A. York’ (on the reverse) oil on canvas laid down on panel 12 1/2 x 12in Painted in 1968.

Provenance The artist. Davis Galleries, New York, 1968. Private collection, acquired from the above, 1968. By descent to the present owner, 1986. Exhibited New York, Davis Galleries, Albert York: A Selection of Recent Oils, April 2-20, 1968. New York, Davis & Long Company, Albert York, February 22-March 22 1975, n.p., no. 37. This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work being compiled by Cecily Langdale, of Davis & Langdale Company, Inc., New York. We wish to thank her for her assistance cataloguing this lot. I think we live in a paradise. This is a Garden of Eden, Albert York once told The New Yorker’s Calvin Thomkins. He continued, really it is. It might be the only paradise we ever know, and it’s just so beautiful, with the trees and everything here, and you feel you want to paint it. Put it into a design. (as quoted in W. Corbett, Albert York, Boston, Massachusetts, 2010, n.p.) In contrast to the inspired words spoken by the artist above, Albert York endured far less spirited beginnings, having been born in Detroit and raised during the Great Depression. His parents separated soon after his birth and his father, a Canadian who found employment in the auto industry, placed him with a boarding nursery school for the first seven years of his life. York’s artistic impulses surfaced early and motivated him to draw figures and animals in charcoal. These urges stayed with him after he was sent to live with his aunt in Ontario at the age of fourteen where, in high school, he studied with a local artist. York later went on to study at the Ontario College of Art and Design and the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit before he was drafted to the Army in 1951 for active duty in South Korea. After two years of service, he was discharged and went directly to New York City where he aspired to enroll in the Art Students League and resume painting. Sadly, when the fees were too high for his participation, York was forced to take a number of manual labor jobs that left him little time for painting. He would eventually find his way into night classes with American artist Raphael Soyer (1899-1987). (Ibid, n.p.) By 1959, York’s luck seemed to turn. The connections he gained in Soyer’s classes lead him to a position at Robert Kulicke’s frame production studio where he worked as a gilder. In the same year, he also met Virginia Mann Caldwell, who would later become his wife. By 1963, York was introduced to Roy Davis, an art dealer and founder of Davis Galleries in New York, which was known for handling contemporaneous artists like Aaron Shikler (1922-2015) and David Levine (1910-2005). Davis proved vastly important to York and the advancement of his standing within the New York art scene. (Ibid, n.p.) The present work, Begonia Plant in Flower Pot, was painted in 1968, only five years after Davis began his representation of the artist. Its honest and calming palette is indicative of the arrangements York composed in the 1960s. When describing York’s floral and plant compositions in oil, William Corbett, a poet and York enthusiast wrote: They are natural and painted with total conviction. The flowers are not prettified. They have no sweetness about them nor are they delicate. Their beauty is uncompromised by sentiment. York does not attempt to elicit our sympathy: these flowers belong where they are, having been placed with a certain nonchalance yet painted with lavish strokes and total attention. It is this concentrated attention which York gives to his viewer. (Ibid, n.p.) Albert York’s paintings, which were collected by a number of prestigious and noteworthy figures in New York in the latter half of the twentieth century, retain a quietness that provided a sharp contrast to city life. Corbett eloquently summarized this when he wrote: They are instances of the beauty humans ceaselessly make, beauty that is its own reward, beauty that disregards our woes and is inexplicable, deep and clear. He goes on to say that, York’s flowers remind us that beauty is here too and stillness, moments for rest and meditation, moments apart to think about and feel what is in the world independent of the human urge to command and control. (Ibid, n.p.)