4310 Papermill Dr. NW
Knoxville, TN 37909
United States
Case Auctions is based in Knoxville, Tennessee, where our gallery is located, with satellite offices in Nashville, Tennessee and Kingsport, TN – but our reach is worldwide. Established in 2005, we conduct cataloged auctions of investment-quality art and antiques under the stewardship of knowledgeabl...Read more
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Jan 25, 2025
Meyer R. Wolfe (Tennessee/New York, 1897-1985), "Vanderbilt Clinic," 1939, American Regionalist lithograph depicting a group of Black patients with weary expressions in a segregated waiting room at the Vanderbilt Medical Clinic in Nashville, Tennessee. A narrow doorway shows a white nurse, seated at a desk and reading, in an adjacent room. Titled and numbered "Ed 25" lower left. Signed and dated lower right. Housed under glass in a simple, ebonized wood frame with cream mat. Sight: 13" H x 16 1/2" W. Framed: 20 3/4" H x 23 3/4" W. Note: this is perhaps the best recognized of a series of approximately 15 lithographs created by Wolfe depicting lives of African Americans in Nashville during the Jim Crow era, and speaks to healthcare challenges the artist observed facing many Black Nashvillians. This particular image, along with Wolfe's "Red Eye's Hall" and "Tuesday - Ophelia" (also included in this auction) from the same series, are among the prints and drawings in the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation Collection at the Library of Congress; "Vanderbilt Clinic" is also in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Art and Vanderbilt University. Biography: Meyer ("Mike") Wolfe was born into a Jewish Lithuanian immigrant family, the second of ten children. He was raised in a low-income, multiracial neighborhood of Nashville just north of the Tennessee State Capitol, where he observed the social and cultural lives of his African American friends. As a teen with an interest in drawing, he became a protege of Pulitzer Prize-winning Nashville cartoonist Carey Orr. In 1917 he studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago and worked as an illustrator. In 1918 he moved to New York and met Ashcan School painter John Sloan, who became one of his most influential teachers. Wolfe traveled to Paris in 1926 to train at the Academie Julian in Paris. While overseas, he met (and later married) the fashion photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe. Meyer exhibited at the San Francisco Art Association, the New York 1939 World's Fair, and in Nashville, where he later returned to live. However, much of his later life was spent supporting and managing his wife's career, and as a result, many of Wolfe's paintings and prints were never publicly shown or sold. His narrative lithographs of African American life in Nashville during the 1930s are considered among his most important works and very rarely come on the market. His work is also held by the National Museum of American Art-Smithsonian Institution, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis. Sources: "Meyer Wolfe: The Star of All Things" (digital catalog for the 2021 exhibition at the Nashville Parthenon); Dr. Lawrence Wolfe; Robert Ikard, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Summer, 2007.
Overall very good condition. With negligible specks of very faint foxing to lower right corner and along lower sight edge. Not examined outside of frame. Negligible abrasions and paint loss to frame.
Estate of Dr. Lawrence Wolfe, Nashville, Tennessee.
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