ANDERSON, Marian - GLASS, Douglas (photo.).

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Large portrait photograph. Elegantly restrained head and shoulders image of the groundbreaking African-American contralto by a New Zealand-born painter-photographer noted for his portraits of artists and musicians.Philadelphia-born Anderson (1897-1993) had made her London debut at Wigmore Hall in 1928, subsequently performing there again in 1933, providing a base for her rapturously acclaimed European tours. It was not until 1955 that she broke the colour bar in her own country by becoming the first Black artist to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She is also remembered for, among other highlights, her Lincoln Memorial concert (1939) - having previously been refused permission to sing in Washington, DC's Constitution Hall because of her race - and her performances at the inaugurations of both Presidents Eisenhower (1957) and Kennedy (1961).Glass also arrived in London in 1928, establishing himself first as a journalist mingling with key players of modernism. He subsequently shifted to painting, trained at the Central School of Art, and exhibited alongside such as Gabo, Kandinsky, Hepworth, Mondrian, and Calder in a 1939 show, "Abstract and Concrete Art" at Guggenheim Jeune in Cork Street. In the early 40s he made his final move into photography, producing photojournalism for The Saturday Book, before joining UNRRA documenting displaced persons camps across Europe. Back in London he specialized in portraiture, famed for his emotionally revealing images of leading

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.