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MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS At Leroy's.
Watercolor and pen and black ink on paper, circa 1924. 280x240 mm; 11x9 1/2 inches. Signed in pen and black ink, lower right recto.
Published in Covarrubias, Negro Drawings, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1927, plate 42 (illustrated).
There is a brush and black ink and wash with pencil drawing of this subject in the Whitney Museum of American Art, titled The Last Jump, Cabaret on a Saturday Night, 1924 (accession number 2014.21).
The subject relates to the popular eponymous Harlem nightclub owned by Leroy Wilkins, whose brother, Barron Wilkins, owned the Barron Wilkins' Exclusive Club, a mainstay of Harlem Renaissance nightlife. Whereas Barron Wilkins' Exclusive Club catered to a selected white audience and mostly forebade black clientele, Leroy's had a purely African American audience. In 1925, Count Basie had his first appearance at Leroy's, where he played with the likes of Fats Waller and other jazz icons before gaining national recognition.
