RICHARD HAYLEY LEVER (1876-1958)

Details

RICHARD HAYLEY LEVER (1876-1958)

Lower Manhattan

signed Hayley Lever, l.l.--oil on canvas 25 x 30in. (63.4 x 76cm.)

Provenance

Macbeth Gallery, Inc., New York
Bernard Black Gallery, New York
Joan Patterson Roberts, New Canaan, Connecticut
New York, Sotheby Parke-Bernet (Sale: April 21, 1978, lot 66)

Exhibited

New York, Macbeth Gallery, Inc., Paintings by Frederick C. Frieseke and Hayley Lever, 1922, no. 23, as Lower New York, probably this work
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Circulating Picture Club, n.d. Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Directions in American Painting 1875-1925, June-Aug. 1982, pp. 48-49, illus. (this exhibition travelled to various locations, 1982-1987)
Youngstown, Ohio, Youngstown State University, The John J. McDonough Museum of Art, Inaugural Exhibition, Oct. 1991-May 1992

Lot Essay

The subject of this painting is similar to From the Lackawanna, also exhibited at MacBeth Gallery in 1922, and now known through a photograph in the artist's file at the New York Public Library. Both paintings depict the business district of lower Manhattan from the vantage of the Lackawanna Railroad station in Hoboken, New Jersey. The painting may date to as early as 1912 or 1913, given the "painterly, layer-like quality" that resembles other Lever works of that period. (Rodriguez Roque in Directions in American Painting, p. 48)