CHARLES K. SIBLEY (American, 1921 - 2005). SEATED FIGURE, signed upper left. Oil on board - Framed, 38 in. x 29 1/2 in. Estimate $600-800
PROVENANCE: Sycamore Farm, Portsmouth, VA, the large estate of Robert Vick and Charles Sibley
Charles Sibley The art of Charles Sibley is synonymous with quality. Richly applied and tempered with vibrant, lush color, Sibley's work has lost none of its magic over the years. His paintings take on lives of their own and breathe deep breaths, making their own statements and eliminating the need for explanatory text.
Above all, they spotlight the human condition.
Through the years, Sibley has concerned himself with the ravages of time, war and disease on the human body and soul. He returns to this theme again and again as though unable to close the book on the subject.
But Sibley has always been straightforward about his preoccupation with the unlovely. "I try to present in art aspects not of the popular direction." Art, he said, has "the same value as truth. It's a facet of life, and sometimes we reject a large facet of life because it is unpleasant. Our culture does not provide a function for the aged person or the person who is ill or ugly. I feel there is just as much legitimacy in them as in the young and the beautiful. In their way, they are just as beautiful,"
Charles Sibley was born in Huntington, WV, and studied at Ohio State University, The Chicago Art Institute, Iowa State University and Columbia University. While at Columbia in 1950-51, he was part of a circle of well-known artist friends who included J.C. Leyendecker, Willem De Kooning, Leonard Baskin and Moses Soyer. He also received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant in 1950, for creative research in oil painting, and was also a past recipient of the Salmagundi Club prize.
Charles Sibley moved to Norfolk, VA, in 1951, to establish an art department at what was then the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary - now Old Dominion University. He watched his department grow from a one man operation to a full-scale department with numerous faculty offering degree programs to university students, many of whom he mentored.
"I enjoyed it," he said of his teaching and mentoring. "But, it's much less personal than your own presentation as an artist, with signed works spanning three decades. More than money or anything else, I want time, time to be here in my studio…"
Listed in Who's Who in America since 1962, Mr. Sibley has had works exhibited in many distinguished shows including the Carnegie International, the Whitney Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Virginia Museum and the Norfolk Museum. He has been a consistent prize winner. His works appear in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard University, the Ohio State Museum, the Texas State Museum, the Virginia State Museum, the North Carolina State Museum, and the Norfolk Museum, among many others. Sibley and his partner of many years, Robert Vick, who was also an artist and whose works also appear in this auction, lived in Portsmouth, VA, at Vick's family estate "Sycamore Farm". They were both recognized as major influences on the artistic way of life in the Tidewater region of Virginia. Sibley and Vick furnished their home with fine art, antiques and artifacts accumulated during their many trips around the world. Sibley described Sycamore Farm in an eight -page profile of the house that appeared in Elle Décor magazine in December 2000 , "It is truly a Southern-fried house."
And by Southern-fried, he meant traditional to the core.
