Lot 19: META VAUX WARRICK FULLER (1877 - 1968) Silence and Repose.

META VAUX WARRICK FULLER (1877 - 1968)
Silence and Repose.

Pair of plaster bookends, painted gold, circa 1934. Both approximately 165x125x100 mm; 6 1/2x5x4 inches. Both with the artist's initials incised, right side. Both with scattered wear and chipping.

Silence has the embossed markings of "El Roi Tan - FLOR FINA," the trademark of a cigar maker, on its base. The artist used the lid of a embossed tin cigar box to make the mold.

Provenance: gift from the artist to Dorothy Lanard, Framingham, MA, a close childhood friend; thence a gift to the current owner.

These bookends are very scarce and wonderfully Romantic works by one of the first renowned African-American sculptors. Fuller is an important artist whose long career included working in Paris with Auguste Rodin. Her most famous work The Awakening of Ethiopia, circa 1910, one of the great symbols of the Harlem Renaissance, is in the collection of the Schomburg Library and Research Center in Harlem.

Silence and Repose are well-known works from the artist's mid-career, and are described and photographed by her biographer, art historian Judith Kerr in her 1986 doctoral thesis. This pair was in the artist's Framingham home after she married Dr. Solomon C. Fuller, and were part of "the artist's most significant work of 1934." Kerr describes how the symbolism of "Silence" and "Repose" are in "the tradition of 'ideal' sculpture" to epitomize contemplation and enlightenment - a fitting theme for objects associated with a library.

We believe this is the first time a work by Fuller has ever come to auction. Kerr pp. 293-4; St. James p. 203-4.