Samuel Wood Gaylor, Lovely, Delicate Watercolor Portrait of Young Woman, 1920

I think the highlight of July Brimfield for me was digging through a pile of paintings and watercolors by American artists Samuel Wood Gaylor (1883-1957) and Adelaide Lawson Gaylor (1889-1986), which had been acquired by the dealer from a one time neighbor of the couple on Long Island. I plucked a handful, signed and unsigned, including this very lovely, delicate watercolor portrait on paper signed by Wood Gaylor, dated 1920--emblematic of his watercolors of the period, and which I love all the more for the color testing at lower right. In 2021, Swann auctioned a series of Gaylor's watercolors from the 1920s, very close in nature to this one. Tons out there about him and his work (which was included in the 1913 Armory Show, critical in establishing American Modernism), including a wonderful, expansive 2021 review by Roberta Smith for the NY Times about a solo exhibition of his large scale paintings at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington NY.

Paper size 13 3/4" x 10" and in good condition, lovelier, more luminous, and more ethereal feeling in hand. A few light stains/minor toning around edges and some very light rippling to the paper just around the edges (product of watercolor on paper)--very minor and significantly more pronounced in photos than in hand.