Charcoal and gouache on illustration board, 1959-60. 935x673 mm; 38x26 1/2 inches. Signed in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles; Mr. and Mrs. Max E. Youngstein, Los Angeles; Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York; John Axelrod, Boston (1994); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011), with the gallery labels on the frame back.
Exhibited: African-American Art 20th Century Masterworks, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, November 18, 1993 - February 12, 1994; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1994, with the label on the frame back.
Illustrated: African-American Art 20th Century Masterworks, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, p. 8; Andrea Barnwell, Charles White, The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art: Volume I, p. 71.
Charles White captures a jazz musician in a quiet moment of pause in this large drawing, which originally was part of a triptych depicting three musicians entitled Trio. Each are drawn in charcoal and silhouetted with a surrounding ground of white gouache--an experimental treatment by the artist at the time. Trio also included drawings of a Guitarist and Clarinetist, now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The group of drawings was acquired by the film producer Max E. Youngstein, one of the owners of the film studios United Artists in the 1950s. Trios were popular in jazz at the time, but were typically led by a pianist with a drummer and bassist. White and Youngstein were both active in support of the Civil Rights movement. Both their names are found on the famous 1960 "Heed Their Voices" petition that solicited funds to defend Martin Luther King, Jr. against an Alabama perjury indictment and was published in The New York Times as a full page advertisement. Gedeon D131.
