Swann Auctions is the route through which a number of Charles White’s works are brought to the marketplace. The catalogues that accompany these auctions are always a treasure trove of high quality reproductions of work by African American artists, together with descriptions of varying lengths, biographical information, and guide prices. The Swann African-American Fine Art catalogue of October 4, 2007 was devoted to the deaccessioning of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company African-American Art Collection. This was one of a number of auctions that offered for sale several works by Charles White, the most important of which was General Moses (Harriet Tubman), Chinese ink on 2 joined sheets of illustration board, 1965, 1193 x 1727 mm (47 x 68 inches), signed and dated in ink, lower right. Including the iconic Move On Up a Little Higher, 1961, Charcoal and Wolff crayon on illustration board, 1004 x 1205 mm; signed and dated in charcoal, lower right. It was this powerful work that was used on the covers of two versions of Erwin A Salk's A Layman's Guide to Negro History - see https://www.eddiechambers.com/charles-white/layman-guide-negro-history/ and https://www.eddiechambers.com/charles-white/guide-negro-history-reprint/

General Moses (Harriet Tubman) graced the cover of the auction catalogue and a wonderful fold-out two-page reproduction of the work could be found in the pages of the publication.

The text accompanying the double-page reproduction included

Charles White has taken realism to great heights in this powerful portrait, one of the most impressive of his large scale drawings of the mid-1960s. The monumental size of General Moses reinforces the heroic realism of the subject. Lucinda Gedeon made the association between the large scale of Charles White’s drawings and the strength of his figurative statement. She states “White’s affirmative statement of black dignity represented in these figures is strengthened by the sheer size of the drawings (often as large as three by four feet), and their unadulterated realism.” In the era of the wall-sized painting of Abstract Expressionism, Charles White elevated the genre of figurative drawing with his own life-size statements.

Charles White also gives the drawing an intensity with the density of the line and mark making. Gedeon describes how White used all types of drawing media in a variety of applications using “Q-tips, Kleenex, rags, balsa wood, brushes, and a whole slew of other things.” White further described the density obtained through steady, methodical application used in these large drawings – “I begin to work lightly in halftones which I fix very strongly. I then work from that and fix another layer as I keep building up the composition. In this way, when I work with conté and charcoal, I can get very strong blacks because of the chemical reaction of the fixative to the medium that I’m working on top of. Using this method I can get a far more extensive range of values than I would ordinarily.” This density of line creates the volumetric forms in the craggy outcrop and the seated figure. The figure appears concrete and the lines combine to resonate with intensity.

Also offered for sale in this auction catalogue were a number of other Charles White works, Untitled (Head of a Man), etching, circa 1940; Mayor Tom Bradley, lithograph, 1974; Frederick Douglass, etching, 1973; Profile, etching, 1974;  and Study for Lead Belly, graphite and charcoal on vellum paper, circa 1978.