LOT 009
Betty Roodish Goodwin
CPE OC
1923 - 2008
Canadian
The Candle Sellers
oil on board
signed and dated 1959 and on verso titled and inscribed "517 Lansdowne Ave., Westmount. #D" on a label, inscribed "D", numbered "BG-T-1959-02" on a label and stamped "Studio Betty Goodwin"
10 x 7 1/4 in, 25.4 x 18.4 cm
Estimate: $1,200 - $1,600
Sold for: $1,500
Preview at:
PROVENANCE
Estate of the Artist
At the beginning of her career, at the close of the Second World War, Betty Goodwin was especially concerned with art’s purpose. Like many other artists of her generation, she saw painting as a political and social act that could reconnect the individual to a greater collective purpose. Thus, in the early 1950s, she worked in the Social Realist tradition, depicting the continued struggle of the working class and wartime immigrants.
Dating from 1959, The Candle Sellers is a later example of Goodwin’s concern with the working class strife. It is also at a junction between her earlier Social Realist portraits of workers - such as Untitled (Lot 014 in this sale) – and her later, more abstracted works. Here, Goodwin has practically erased the faces of the two anonymous candle sellers, and has placed them in a nondescript space. By erasing any reference to time, character or place, Goodwin has made this work universal, grounding it in a shared sense of humanism.
All prices are in Canadian Dollars
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