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De Mare, George - AFRICA: Eleven original watercolor and pencil portraits [ identified ] of Africans of the Ivory Coast, 1899 Ivory Coast, manuscript, 1899, 4to., not bound. Pencil and watercolor washes. Unique. All in very good condition. Eleven related portraits done from life completed between April and August of 1899. They are all of African men and women mostly from Roc Bereby. Each individual is identified by name and in some cases their social position. All contain full information along with the artist's name boldly inscribed in pencil in the lower right hand corner. These are historically accurate, highly accomplished, and appealing portraits. They are direct, honest, individual character renderings without sentimentality. Each has a real immediacy. Among the subjects are : ' Le Vieux roi - Tobi ' ; ' Le Brigadier Amadi Cire ' ;' Yeppa ' ; ' Polee ' ; ' Moses Bonafacio ' ; ' Le Grand Chef Ghissa ' ; ' Yu Lou dit Blackwell ' ; etc.. The overall dimensions of the sheet size is appx. 24 x 16 cm. . The purpose, if any, for which these portraits were done is unknown. De Mare was born in 1863 in Lucca Italy and died in a fire in Kansas City in 1907. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the Academie Julian, Paris and was a member of the Chicago Society of Artists and the Municipal Arts League of Chicago.

$7800.