**First Time At Auction**

Charles Baskerville (American, 1896-1994). Untitled watercolor, ca. 1940. Signed on the lower left. A beautiful watercolor of a Moroccan market frequented by sailors dressed in their US Navy service dress white uniforms by American artist Charles Baskerville who served in both World War I and World War II. Local women dressed in hoodedcoats and men wearing turbans and flowing garments are present at the market, some shopping and others minding their fresh produce stands, some shaded by fabric awnings, others standing on a walkway, under a tree, or beneath an arch at the top of a stairway. A very special composition by Charles Baskerville, an artist who served in both World Wars. Size: 9.875" L x 6.875" W (25.1 cm x 17.5 cm) Size of frame: 17.25" L x 13.2" W (43.8 cm x 33.5 cm)

Charles Baskerville studied at Cornell University, but his studies were interrupted by World War I. He served in the Rainbow Division as a lieutenant and earned a Silver Star. During the war he sketched fellow soldiers, and several of his drawings were published in Scribner's Magazine. Charles returned to Cornell after the war, graduated in 1919, and embarked on an art career which was again interrupted by war. He served as a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Air Force during World War II and also worked as a portrait painter.

In addition to being a portraitist, Baskerville was a prolific muralist and still life painter. Baskerville's clientele was comprised of an impressive list of elites, "from business executives and socialites to actresses and foreign leaders" and many of his compositions were created when he served during World War II. According to the Johnson Collection website, "His mural work surely benefitted from the connections he made as a portraitist, because the commissions were often located in the kinds of spaces that his patrons—especially wealthy women and military officials—frequented. For instance, Baskerville was commissioned to paint the murals in the first-class lounge of the ocean liner SS America, the conference room used by the Joint Committee on Military Affairs at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, and the pool house at the Long Island estate of businessman and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney.

Military service in World War II took Lieutenant Colonel Baskerville abroad as the official portrait painter of the United States Air Force. In that position, he created over sixty portraits of officers and soldiers that were exhibited widely during and after the war, and are now on permanent display at the Pentagon. These portraits, Baskerville said, 'are what I am proudest of.' Paintings by Charles Baskerville are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum."

This painting comes to us from the estate of William Draper. In 1942, William Draper joined the Navy, and served as a combat artist when stationed on the Aleutian Islands and in the South Pacific. He observed and painted battle scenes on Bougainville, Guam, Saipan, and other locations, as well as genre scenes of soldiers not engaged in combat but rather between battles.

Provenance: The William F. Draper Collection, New York City, USA, acquired via descent from the late William Franklin Draper (1912-2003), an accomplished American artist whose career spanned seven decades. Known as the "Dean of American Portraiture," William Draper was the only artist to paint President John F. Kennedy from life, and his oeuvre

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#153289

This watercolor has not been examined outside the frame but appears to be in very nice condition. Hand signed by the artist on lower left. Draper Estate stamp on verso. Wired for suspension and ready to display.