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Lot 38
GEORGE GROSZ(1893-1959)The Ransom of Red Chief
15 May 2025, 12:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$20,480 inc. premium
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GEORGE GROSZ (1893-1959)
The Ransom of Red Chief
signed 'Grosz' (lower left) and inscribed 'The Ransom of Red Chief' (lower right)
watercolor and pen and colored ink on paper
26 3/16 x 18 7/8 in (66.5 x 48 cm)
Executed in 1934
signed 'Grosz' (lower left) and inscribed 'The Ransom of Red Chief' (lower right)
watercolor and pen and colored ink on paper
26 3/16 x 18 7/8 in (66.5 x 48 cm)
Executed in 1934
Footnotes
The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Ralph Jentsch. This work will be included in the forthcoming George Grosz catalogue raisonné of works on paper, currently being prepared.
Provenance
The artist's studio, Long Island.
Private collection, US (acquired from the artist).
Sale: Parke-Bernet, New York, November 5, 1969, lot 31.
Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco, no. 1894.2.
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, September 16, 2005, lot 133.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Literature
O. Henry, The Voice of the City and Other Stories, New York, 1935, pp. 50 & 51 (illustrated).
It was in 1934 that Georges Macy, publisher of the Limited Edition Club in New York, gave Grosz the assignment to illustrate O. Henry's selected short stories, published a year later under the title "The Voice of the City and Other Stories."
One looks at this watercolor and puzzles over what is taking place. An elderly guy is cooking some eggs over an open fire, while a freckled red-haired boy seems to play horse and rider with another guy. By reading O. Henry's story, one gets taken away from a plausible development to an unexpected end. Two layabouts are roaming around in Alabama, suddenly struck by the idea of kidnapping someone, asking a ransom to set their prey free. In the little village of Summit, they made out a kid of ten, the only child of a prominent citizen. They took him to a cave, hidden in the mountains, planning to ask a ransom of two thousand dollars. However, the kid loved the adventure, the fun of camping out made him forget that he was a captive, calling himself Red Chief of a Native American tribe, overruling the two guys with nonstop questions and actions, driving them crazy. Their letter of ransom was answered by a letter with a counter proposition that they would have to pay two hundred and fifty dollars in cash that the boy would be taken off their hands. So the nervewrecked guys decided in the end: "We'll take him home, pay the ransom, and make our getaway."
This fine watercolor by Grosz, like the other watercolors and drawings he did for O. Henry, show how thrilled the artist got by O. Henry's storytelling, and how brilliantly he executed the watercolors, opening an illustrative world of its own to the text. It is remarkable, that Grosz started the work without any preliminary drawing, using only watercolor, working the watercolor wet into wet, with only a few lines of red pen and ink for some contour and details.
Excerpted text by Ralph Jentsch.
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