Provenance

This print comes from the Collection of John Ives, the son of Norman Ives. It was originally produced for a portfolio made by Norman Ives and Sewell Sillman with Walker Evans in 1971. Norman Ives, Sewell Sillman, Walker Evans and John Hill - the current executer of the estate - were all professors at Yale. Sewell Sillman produced several portfolios for other artists including Walker Evans. He was a big promoter of Walker's work. All the prints were contact printed by Thomas A. Brown from the original negatives under Walker Evans direct supervision. They intended to make 100 portfolios each composed of 14 prints. Walker Evans died in 1975 and at the time only 88 portfolios from the edition were signed/numbered and sold. They did not incur the expense of producing the linen case and signing and mounting the prints until portfolios were sold, so when he died, there were 12 sets of prints that were not signed, mounted, editioned or grouped together in a case. The print that we have is from one of those 12 sets. An entire set of unsigned prints were recently sold to a library in Paris.