Beautiful large original sketch of a horse by Edie Sedgwick, accomplished in graphite and crayon on off-white 17 x 18 sheet of artist paper, depicting the head and neck of a horse in a lovely up-close pose, signed in the lower right corner in pencil, “Edith Sedgwick, ‘61.” Matted to an overall size of 20 x 22.5. In fine condition.
Sedgwick left the St. Timothy's School boarding school in 1959 and returned to her family’s La Laguna ranch in California, where she remained until she was sent to the private Silver Hill psychiatric hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut, in the fall of 1962. Her date notation of 1961 places her at the age of either 17 or 18 when this work was created. A gorgeous piece from Sedgwick, whose love for horses remained a constant throughout her short life.
According to her brother Jonathan Sedgwick: ‘When it came to real horses, Edie would always get the best-looking one. She could get anything she wanted. Spoiled. Even if I had the best-looking horse, it became her horse because she convinced everyone that I was too heavy for him and that he’d get tired under my weight. That was cool; it didn’t bother me. We were on top of horses at fourteen months. They’d prop us up on them for a picture to be taken, and then you’d keep wanting a horse. Everybody rode, and you just started riding the first thing you could…Edie and Suky rode at night, through the moonlight.’
From the Michael Post Collection.