Original artwork for the dust jacket of The George Gershwin Song-book and the illustration for the song Sweet and Low Down. - photo 1

Original artwork for the dust jacket of The George Gershwin Song-book and the illustration for the song Sweet and Low Down.

Sold
£ 8 190
Auction dateClassic
28.09.2023 13:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 1016438
Lot 144 | Original artwork for the dust jacket of The George Gershwin Song-book and the illustration for the song Sweet and Low Down.
Original artwork for the dust jacket of The George Gershwin Song-book and the illustration for the song Sweet and Low Down.

Constantin Alajálov

Constantin ALAJALOV (1900-1987).



Original artwork for the dust jacket of The George Gershwin Song-book and the illustration for the song Sweet and Low Down.



Born in Russia and emigrating to New York City in 1923, illustrator and cartoonist Constantin Alajálov ‘amused several generations of readers of The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, Vogue and other publications with his droll, slice-of-life cartoons… and illustrated many books.’ Among his most enduring contributions to American popular culture are his illustrations for Gershwin’s Song-book. Commissioned by Random House for the 1932 publication of The George Gershwin Song-book, Alajálov’s evocative artwork depicts the interior of a Harlem club, most likely the Cotton Club, based on the exclusively white clientele, the shimmying dancers embodying the exuberance of Jazz Age New York. The image was used as both the dust jacket design and as the title illustration for the song Sweet and Low Down on pages 60-61. In his short biography of the artist in the song-book, gallerist Samuel M. Kootz remarks that Alajálov had made ‘no attempt… to be faithful to the music or lyrics, but rather to savour their source and inspiration’. Gershwin, for his part, opined that the ‘splendid drawings’ captured ‘the spirit of the songs’. Gershwin cited in Pollack, 520. Kootz in The George Gershwin Song-book, xi. New York Times obituary, 1987.



The present artwork has never appeared at auction. Prior to acquisition by Charlie Watts, the work had passed by descent through a single family, having been presented to them over 50 years ago by composer Vernon Duke, a close friend of Gershwin. Duke is best known for the compositions Autumn in New York, Taking a Chance on Love, I Can’t Get Started and April in Paris.



This image, which came to epitomise the Harlem era, through its use as a cover-image of Gershwin’s Song-Book shows us the diversity of the Harlem Jazz scene, but through the unsympathetic gaze of a white artist, Constantin Alajálov. Although the scene in its entirety is satirised, the depiction of African American musicians here is complicated and very much represents, despite the rise in jazz’s popularity as a fashionable pastime, that there were still strong racial undertones to the ‘unknown’ of this new musical phenomenon.



Watercolour with pencil under-drawing on board, 237 x 402 mm, framed (415 x 530 mm). Provenance: Vernon Duke (1903-1969; Russian-born American composer).

Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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28.09.2023 – 28.09.2023
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