Henrietta Shore by Merle Armitage

Henrietta Shore
Henrietta Shore
(Cover)
1933
Author: Merle Armitage
Inscribed by Merle Armitage on limitation page
Soft-wrapped book on paper
11 x 8.75 inches
Price: $1650

Description:
This is a very rare book on this important California Modernist. The book has a wrap-around orange-red dust jacket, is 54 pages long and is numbered 48 of only 200 numbered, unsigned copies. It has an inscription on the limitation page from Merle Armitage to Enid and Earl Stendahl, owners of the Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles. There is an original color lithograph portrait of Henrietta Shore by artist Jean Charlot, pencil signed by Charlot at the bottom. Jean Charlot was a friend of Shore and a French and naturalized American painter and illustrator, active mainly in Mexico and the United States. There also is a color frontispiece lithograph by Shore, 4 color images of drawings and 16 black and white images of lithographs by Shore. The book constitutes a brief examination of the life and career of painter Henrietta Shore. Canadian by birth, Shore took American citizenship in 1921 in New York, where she was one of the founders of the New York Society of Women Artists and, later, the Modern Art Society of Los Angeles. She experimented with art movements ranging from Post-Impressionism to Modernism to Surrealism. The book contains an Appraisal by Reginald Poland and an Article by Edward Weston, who also photographed the original drawings and lithographs for the book. Merle Armitage was a leading force in modern book design in America during the period 1930-1950. One of Armitage’s scarcest works and the first book on Shore, this is a very good to near fine copy of the book with just a few small nicks in the spine. It is in a fair dust wrapper which has some sunning and toning, especially to the spine which also has several edge tears and losses. There also are a few stray pencil marks on the back cover. This book is from the library of the recently closed Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles, one of the oldest private art galleries in America.