Charles White
(1919-1979)
Woman in Blue (Woman with Folded Arms).
Oil on canvas, 1965-66.
Estate stamp signature, lower right. Gedeon B61.
50 x 34 in. (127 x 86.4 cm.)

Provenance:
Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles (label).
Alitash Kebede Fine Arts, Los Angeles (label).
Private collection, California..

Exhibited:
Homage to Charles White, Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, 1981.
Charles White, Selected Work 1947-1978, Mary Porter Session Art Gallery, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, January 15 - February 12, 1984, no. 9.

Notes:
This beautiful portrait by Charles White is a wonderful example of his late career oil painting. This canvas is also one of White's largest easel paintings and of an important subject for the artist.

White painted Woman in Blue at an important period in his career in Los Angeles. The year before, he had his first solo exhibition with Heritage Gallery and began teaching at the Otis Art Institute the following year. White returned to easel oil painting in earnest in 1965 after a five year hiatus. 1965 was also a pivotal year in the civil rights history of Los Angeles with the Watts Rebellion.

This oil painting is one of a series of heroic portraits of women by Charles White. In 1965-66 Fulfillment I, Fulfillment II and Standing Woman (also in the artist's estate), White portrayed a number of similar women with heads covered and in flowing cloaks. He depicted them as courageous figures as seen in an earlier heroic double portrait of General Moses and Sojourner, 1954. In 1965, White's important monumental portrait of General Moses (Harriet Tubman) is another example – acquired by the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles. White would return this depiction of women again and again, from his first color lithograph to his iconic drawing J'Accuse #1.
Woman in Blue is one of a number of oil paintings that remained in the artist's estate after his passing in 1979. It was later exhibited and sold by Heritage Gallery in Los Angeles. Lucinda Gedeon recorded it in her catalogue raisonne as Woman with Folded Arms.

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