A curious folk art baseball painting and its sources (?)
 

A painting coming up at auction caught my eye recently -- at an upstate NY auction house.

https://p1.liveauctioneers.com/1122/...ion=1576263841

Auction link: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item...seball-subject

(That lot has 75 watchers -- I'm not outing a secret.)

At first I was amazed, and then I got skeptical -- "too good to be true" usually is. The stretchers don't much age to them, and the painting seems a combo of turn of the century (the background) and later (the blackface players).

So I did a little google image searching, and found a few things.

First, the same painting was sold four years ago, which tells us nothing about the painting but is interesting nonetheless: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item...baseball-playe

More interesting was finding two different paintings that appear to be "source material" --
What appears to be an actually old (i.e., late 19th century/early 20th) canvas, but with white players and the same building in the background:
https://www.rafaelosonaauction.com/a...baseball-game/
https://www.rafaelosonaauction.com/w...s-1500x856.jpg

And, another seemingly older canvas that echoes the one at auction now, but without the background:
https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item...ing-of-a-black
https://p1.liveauctioneers.com/463/9...ion=1472770252

That's all I've found. It's all a bit baffling -- the painting at auction now is clearly influenced by both of these paintings, but they could never (?) have all been in the same place. Are these images reproduced elsewhere? Is there another source image from the 19th century that all are descended from?

If anyone has more info on these or related paintings, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks & happy holidays,

David

I've seen these way too many times and I do not believe that they are old

I saw the painting with the white players, or one similar to it, in a western NY auction a few years ago. It was deemed to be a fake. I believe it was almost the mirror image of picture in a book, or something like that.

Liberty of New Brunswick
 

This may be the foundational painting, the root of all subsequent evil: Brooklyn Baltics vs. Liberty of New Brunswick, NJ.

john thorn