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Lot description
Albert Beck Wenzell (American, 1864-1917) Flirtation and Heartbreak, Collier's magazine interior illustration (a pair), March 26, 1910 Oil on canvas laid on board, each 19-1/8 x 29-3/4 inches (48.6 x 75.6 cm) ( Flirtation, oval sight) 17-3/4 x 30-3/4 inches (45.1 x 78.1 cm) ( Heartbreak, oval sight) Heartbreak signed lower center: AB Wenzell PROVENANCE: Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco, California; Grapefruit Moon Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Private collection, Las Vegas, Nevada. EXHIBITED: Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco, California, "The Age of Elegance: Paintings, Drawings, and Pastels by Albert Beck Wenzell," February 10-28, 1967. LITERATURE: Maxwell Galleries, The Age of Elegance: Paintings, Drawings, and Pastels by Albert Beck Wenzell, exhibition catalogue, San Francisco, California, 1967, p. 5, Heartbreak as Allegorical Scene, illustrated. This pair of works is unusual within Wenzell's oeuvre, both for its classical mythological subject and explicit eroticism. These two paintings were clearly conceived as a matched set; presenting a "before" and "after" narrative. The first panel was published as a vignette in the March 26th, 1910 issue of Collier's magazine, however, the second work was never published. The pair was displayed in Wenzell's 1967 Maxwell Gallery exhibition, "The Age of Elegance." Although the two-picture narrative form was used by British satirists like Thomas Rowlandson and the American political cartoonist Thomas Nast, Wenzell's intent here seems closest in spirit to the Clothed and Naked "Maja" pictures of Francisco Goya, where the first panel is intended for public viewing and the second for private consumption only. The second panel reveals that an erotic encounter has indeed taken place between the tree Nymph and the Satyr; and it is unclear whether she is just still asleep as he steals away or dead. For in classical mythology, intimacy with a god usually proved fatal; and although a tree nymph lived a long time (as long as her tree did) she was in fact still mortal. A copy of the Maxwell Galleries exhibition catalog and the tear sheet from Collier's magazine accompanies this lot. HID01801242017