July 15, 2021: Summer Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/15/2021
This is a stunning piece of original artwork of 1950s American League slugger Vic Wertz created by acclaimed editorial cartoonist Frank Williams for the Detroit Free Press. Done in the iconic style of the great sports cartoonists of the postwar era, the artwork features the Tigers’ great slugger Wertz in the middle of perhaps his greatest season in an illustrious, 17-year career, one in which he hit a career-high 27 homers with 123 RBI and a .308 average. The original artwork is as enormous as it is spectacular, with dimensions of 14 ½-by-22 inches, expanded to a full 19-by-26 inches with attractive grey matting. Signed by the artist in the lower left hand corner, the piece has many of the customary internal news and editorial staff markings, including pencil notations for the typesetter for a title, along with line screen designations from the editor. The piece is in superb condition, jostled only nominally by tri-folds that are barely perceptible with the matting. Produced on art board, it is done in elegant fashion with pen-and-ink and lithographer’s crayon, the same media used with all the major newspapers of the day, including the Sporting News. As noted, Wertz was one of the American League’s great sluggers in the 1950s, though perhaps a bit overlooked, a four-time All-Star who ended his career with 266 homers and 1,178 RBI.
1950 Original Vic Wertz Artwork by Frank Williams
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