HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY She was made for love and capture

Sale 2337 - Lot 40

Price Realized: $ 16,250

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000

HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY.
". . . She was made for love and capture, was Polly." Ink, watercolor, gouache full-length portrait on board. Published in the story Being Engaged to Polly by Ellis Parker Butler in Good Housekeeping Magazine, November 1913, page 620. 997x724 mm; 39 1/4x28 1/2 inches, image. Signed, Inscribed, and dated lower right; Good Housekeeping stamp on verso and archival tape along edges attaching image to window matte, some archival and masking tape remnants on board, framed.

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Additional Details

inscribed and signed by christy, likely to evelyn nesbit: "To Evelyn with best friendship. Howard Chandler Christy, 1913." The artists' model and chorus girl was Charles Dana Gibson's most famous "Gibson Girl" and a Floradora Girl of the eponymous Broadway musical. She became the center of the "trial of the century" when her millionaire husband, Harry Thaw, publicly murdered architect Stanford White in a jealous rage at the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden, (then located at the Broadway/5th Avenue/23rd Street intersection, two blocks from Swann Galleries). Nesbit was a friend and model for Christy, both of whom were friends of the painting's first owner, and her resemblance to Polly suggests that she was likely the inspiration for his image of the character.