?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
Gilot, Françoise (1921-2023) & Carlton Lake (1915-2006) Life with Picasso, presentation copy with an original drawing.
New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1964.
First edition, octavo; inscribed to American actress Mary Lawrence (born Mary Lou Lender) in ink on the dedication, alongside an original drawing of a woman's portrait by Gilot; with numerous black-and-white photos throughout; bound in publisher's full oatmeal cloth, gilt-lettered spine, orange endpapers; in the printed dust jacket (price clipped, minor chipping at edges, small areas of loss and one short closed tear reinforced with tape at verso, verso toned; some spotting to cloth); 9 x 6 in.
Mary Lou Lender (1918-1991) was an actress who worked in television and on the silver screen during Hollywood's Golden Age. Her role in Harold Lloyd's 1938 comedy Professor Beware, led to her meeting film director Delmer Daves, who she married later that year. Throughout her life, Lender frequented many museums and galleries. Her passion for art inspired her to collect, focusing largely on art that depicts mothers and their child. After she retired from acting, she published two books related to the field, Mother and Child: 100 Works of Art with Commentaries by 106 Distinguished People in 1975, followed by Lovers: 100 works of Art Celebrating Romantic Love, With Commentaries by the Distinguished and the Great in 1982. Her collection featured numerous pieces by Françoise Gilot, including but not limited to, Tulips and Ballerina's Slippers (1954), Children in the Garden of Vallauris (1958), and Paula dans le Studio avec Philodendron, (1960). The first, sold at Bonham's in 2023, was inscribed to Lender on the stretcher bar. It is likely that all the Gilot paintings in Lender's collection were purchased from the artist at her personal studio, and it is possible that the present lot was presented to Lender as a thank-you gift for her continued patronage.
