Sale 2487 - African-American Fine Art, October 4, 2018

2 c CHARLES ETHAN PORTER (1847 - 1923) Butterflies and Flowers . Gouache and watercolor on wove paper, circa 1878. 228x152 mm; 9x6 inches (image). Signed in pencil, lower center. Provenance: Sacks Fine Art, New York; private collection, New York. This beautiful pair of monarch butterf lies is a very scarce example of Charles Ethan Porter’s trompe l’oeil painting. Hildegarde Cummings describes how Porter exhibited similar works depicting butterf lies, moths, f lies and other insects at the art gallery A. D. Vorce in Hartford, CT in 1878. These realist works were enthusiastically received in the local press - but no later insect works are known after 1879. Cummings pp. 38-40. [5,000/7,000]