65
●
NANCY ELIZABETH PROPHET (1890 - 1960)
Walk Among the Lilies
.
Carved and polychromed wood panel, circa 1935. Approximately 610x457x57 mm; 24x18x2
1
/
4
inches. Incised signature, lower center.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; Sarah Carleton, Providence, RI (1950s); gifted to the
current owners, private Rhode Island collection (1983).
Exhibited:
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: Delicious Sensations of Rightness
,The Rhode Island Historical Society,
Providence, RI,April 7 - July 1, 2014.This is the first time this recently discovered work was shown.
This beautiful
bas-relief
panel is an exciting discovery of Prophet’s sculpture, and only one of two
polychromed panels by the artist known to survive today.This is only the second sculpture by Nancy
Elizabeth Prophet to come to auction - the first was sold at Swann Auction Galleries on February
13, 2014. The most recent exhibition and monograph on the artist, Spelman College’s 2007
Hale
Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and the Academy
located only two wood pieces in private collections,
and a dozen sculptures in the collections of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design,
theWhitney Museum of American Art, and the James P.Adams Library of the Rhode Island College.
It included the polychromed wood panel
Untitled (Facing the Light)
in the collection of the Rhode
Island Black Heritage Society.
Prophet was a talented young sculptor who had a career in Paris as an expatriate artist for over
twelve years, and was accepted into the French Salon. Prophet was the first African-American
graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design in 1918. But unhappy in marriage and with her
career prospects painting portraits in Providence, she “fled” to Paris in 1922 by herself. Despite often
moving and struggling to make ends meet, her work in wood and marble was accepted into the
Salon d’Automne, Sociéte des Artistes Français in Paris. She also had success exhibiting back in the
US including at the Harmon Foundation and Fifty-Sixth Street Galleries, NewYork, and had been
introduced to Henry Ossawa Tanner and Augusta Savage by W.E.B. Dubois. But with the onset of
the Depression, she could not pass up on the opportunity of a teaching position to join Hale
Woodruff at Spelman College in 1934.
This beautiful
bas-relief
panel is typical of the artist’s body of work of solitary subjects with a solemn
air.This panel is closely related in its composition and subject to Prophet’s polychromed wood panel
Untitled (Peace or Facing the Light)
, circa 1930.This large panel was exhibited first upon a trip back
to Providence in 1932 when she was invited to join and exhibit at the Newport Art Association;
the relief is today exhibited at the Newport Art Museum.While over 5 feet long, its treatment of
the figures in profile is very similar to
Walk Among the Lilies
. The figures are also both in
contemplative poses typical of Prophet’s sculpture with their eyes shut. Amaki pp 51, 132; Leininger-
Miller p. 16-17, 24.
[25,000/35,000]
