Sold for $6,250

Provenance:
Estate of Richard L. Jones

Christie’s, Los Angeles, California, Nov. 16, 2004, Lot 63

Collection of Leonard Stark, Chicago, Illinois

Grace Ravlin took one art class as an elective in high school and saw her future unroll before her like a magic carpet. She rode this carpet to the Art Institute of Chicago, then to further studies with William Merritt Chase in Philadelphia and then to Paris and Venice to complete her training. Ravlin returned to the United States, painting in the Southwest, including New Mexico, and exhibiting at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in 1915. After a detour as a Red Cross nurse at the end of World War I, she returned to life as an artist-adventurer. Ravlin was a tireless and fearless traveler, painting in France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia. In 1924, her works were exhibited alongside Robert Henri’s at the prestigious Macbeth Gallery in New York. Ravlin knew many of the Taos Founders, especially Walter Ufer. In fact, Ravlin often used Ufer’s Chicago studio when he was in New Mexico. Ravlin sometimes referred to herself as an “ethnographic painter,” but the sensations a painting such as Corn Dance creates in the viewer, mirrors the vibrations of the dancers across the plaza. Ravlin worked in a post-impressionist mode: thick paint, rhythmic brushstrokes, and the use of color to create contour and resonance. The plaza in Corn Dance, for example, shimmers almost as if the clay were water.

-James D. Balestrieri