Artist:                     Dudley Huppler (1917-1988) American

Title:                       “Cracker The Cat”

Date:                       1950’s

Medium:                Water Color

Materials:              Black ink sketch on water color;

Markings:              Signed on the upper right corner and is inscribed “For Neal” in the upper left corner

Dimensions:          9-½” x 13-½”

Framed:                  Yes, item has remained in the original frame when acquired by Mr. Prince and Mr. Hemphill, Jr.

Provenance:          Neal Adair Prince Trust u/a/d 10.18.1999

Mr. Neal Prince

Mr. Neal Prince and Mr. Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr.¹,²

Mr. Dudley Huppler

Footnote¹:             Item was gift to Mr. Prince by Artist

Dudley Huppler (1917-1988), American

Mr. Huppler was born in Muscoda, WI. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.A. in English). Taught English and art at Universities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Iowa. His drawings were published in "Art Digest", Art News", "Flair", "House Beautiful”,” View" and Vogue" publications. The 2002 Elvehjem Museum of Art Exhibition, "Dudley Huppler: Drawings, "included the following in its press release: "During the 1940's Huppler was part of an advanced circle of artists, composers and writers in Madison, Wisconsin...The group was linked to friends in Chicago and Milwaukee. Huppler went to New York in 1950 where he established friendships with photographers Otto Fenn, George Platt Lynes and Carl van Vechten. He also met writers Charles Henri Ford, Glenway Wescott and Marianne Morre, who referred to Huppler as her literary protégé and praised his drawings. Through social circles, he met Katharine Ann Porter (writer of the book "Ship of Fools"). While over at the apartment of Ms. Porter, he met Neal Adair Prince and Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr., during one of their famous garden parties.  In New York, Huppler showed at Edwin Hewitt's gallery, a relationship initiated by John Wilde. In 1954, through Otto Fenn, Huppler began a friendship with Andy Warhol, then a successful commercial artist. Huppler and Warhol corresponded for many years and exchanged drawings. In spring 1955, Huppler was awarded a Yaddo Residence grant. While living in New York City in the mid-1950, Huppler designed windows for Bonwitt Teller and sold his drawings to advertisers and manufacturers such as the Parker Pen Company. Huppler was also awarded two Huntington Hartford Foundation residence grants during the early 1960's. Like the artists he admired, Huppler was attracted to the sensuality of drawing. He possessed a talent for revealing the humor in nature or delighting in the mystery of objects and their natural transformation. His work is marked by an unusual, meticulous technique which he used to form birds, stone, grass, flowers and other natural elements from tiny gradations of tonal dots. There are few solid lines in his works after 1945; everything is composed through varying densities of tiny dots. His earliest work, dating from late 1943 is a kind of hard-edged biomorphic surrealism; in the late 1940's to early 1950's he made still-life studies and drawings of animals combined with unusual glassware; after trips to Italy in the 1950's he turned towards the fantastic in nature. Throughout the late 1950's, he accepted to do portraits and advertisements on commissions while in New York City. There be befriended the photographer George Platt Lyne. He later moved back to Oshkosh, Wisconsin to teach English at the Wisconsin State University from 1966 until his retirement in 1985. Mr. Huppler died in Boulder, Colorado in 1988.