367. Sargent Claude Johnson, American 1888-1967, The Maypole, c. 1959; welded metal and enamel sculpture, 27.25"h. including base, 6.5"dia., signed, titled on bottom, with original price of $2,500. Highly important African-American sculptor. Sargent Johnson’s parents had died by the time he was 14 years old, so he began living with his aunt, May Howard Johnson, a sculptor. In 1915, Johnson went to San Francisco, to attend the Panama-Pacific Expo, where he met Pearl Lawson, whom he married. He began studying at the A.W. Best School of Art, and then in 1919, attended the California School of Fine Art, under sculptors Ralph Stackpole and Benjamin Bufano. He began exhibiting at the San Francisco Art Association in 1925, and won a gold medal. He became associated with the William E. Harmon Foundation of New York in 1926, and exhibited there for the next 13 years, winning numerous prizes for his sculpture. In 1948, Johnson moved from Berkeley to Telegraph Hill in San Francisco and by this time had completed several important public commissions in San Francisco. That year he held the position of chairman of both the sculpture selection and award juries for the Sixty-seventh Annual Exhibition of Oil, Tempera, and Sculpture at the San Francisco Artists Association. REF: A History of African-American Artists, Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson; African-American Art, Sharon Patton; Sargent Johnson, An African-American Modernist, Provenance: Collection of Samuel Weinberg, Boston, a rare and important work by this artist. 30,000-50,000