SCULPTURAL FANTASY

71
RARE AND IMPORTANT
CARVED AND POLYCHROME
PAINT-DECORATED PINE
TOBACCONIST TRADE FIGURE
DEPICTING A THEATRICAL
FIGURE, POSSIBLY THE WORK
OF WILLIAM DEMUTH OR
SAMUEL ROBB, PROBABLY
NEW YORK, CIRCA 1880
standing in an erect pose with arms crossed
at her chest, she wears belted pantaloons with
tasseled sides.
Height 62 ½ in. by Width 18 in. by Depth 17 ¼ in.
PROVENANCE
William Greenspon, New York;
Fred Giampietro;
Rob and Michelle Wyles;
Giampietro American Folk Art, New Haven,
Connecticut.
LITERATURE
Frederick Fried, Artists in Wood: American
Carvers of Cigar-Store Indians, Show Figures,
and Circus Wagons, (New York: Bramhall
House, 1970), back cover and col. fig. 6;
Ralph Sessions, The Shipcarvers’ Art:
Figureheads and Cigar-Store Indians in
Nineteenth-Century America, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 147, pl. 88.
$ 200,000-300,000
78 SOTHEBY’S THE IMPORTANT AMERICAN FOLK ART COLLECTION OF STEPHEN AND PETRA LEVIN