?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946) Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia, Signed Presentation copy with Photograph of Stein.
Florence: Tip. Galileiana (Propr. Cappelli), no date [1912].
First edition, 1 of 300 copies bound in original limp wallpaper wrappers; inscribed by Stein inside front cover, "To Kate Buss, from Gertrude Stein," with silver print of Stein sitting on a round concrete outdoor dining table, the caption says that it was taken on the grounds of the Villa Curonia, the photo is loosely inserted in the copy (mounted on card with caption in an owner's hand in pencil), the Beinecke has a copy of this image in its Gertrude Stein collection [YCAL MSS 77]; printer's name appears on verso of last leaf; all pieces very nicely preserved; 7 5/8 x 5 3/4 in.
Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962) grew up in a wealthy banking family in Buffalo, New York. She lived at Villa Curonia in Florence between 1905 and 1912, where she and Stein met. A patron of the arts, Dodge published her massive memoirs in four volumes in the mid-1930s. Stein's brief impressionistic sketch of Dodge Luhan, one a series of her word portraits, was the opposite, short, free & open to interpretation. Dodge was so enamored of Stein's portrait that she bought up many copes and, as an organizer of the 1913 Armory show in New York, included it in the show, the only non-visual piece on view.
