Oct 22, 2015 - Sale 2394

Sale 2394 - Lot 385

Unsold
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
"IT WAS YOU . . . WHO INTERESTED ME IN PHOTOGRAPHY" VAN VECHTEN, CARL. Group of 4 items Signed, "Carlo V.V." or "Carl van Vechten," to artist Charles B. Keeler: 3 Autograph Postcards * Typed Letter. The postcards, each a photograph by Van Vechten: colonnade of neoclassical building [University of Virginia]; young man wearing wide-brimmed hat; wooden bull wearing garland around neck. Written on versos, in green ink, on various topics. Each 5x3 inches; slight silvering in dark areas, Van Vechten's blind stamp at lower edge. The letter, with a holograph postscript, in green ink: "Please remember me to your mother when you write her. Is Mrs. Rock living?" 1 page, personal stationery. With the original envelope. Together 4 pages, oblong 12mo or 4to; condition generally good. New York, 1935-36
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19 August [1935]: "A long time ago you told me about Ronda [Spain] and I always wanted to go there & I finally did last May & made some photographs . . . ."
10 September [1935]: "You will get your photographs just as soon as I get a breathing spell from printing. . . . This card is the only Spanish one I have made so far. The young man was in . . . Madrid."
14 October 1935, LS: ". . . I took lots and lots more in Spain: about 1000 are not even printed yet . . . . I am sending you . . . a few action pictures of corridas and the like. They were all made with a Leica and I do all my own developing and printing, some of it a bit too hurriedly, no doubt. It was you . . . who got me interested in Spain, a country to which I am devoted and I cannot say enough in praise of the character of its people. It is amusing to recall that before I had paid my first visit to Spain I had written a book about it, the only book then published relating to Spanish music. Curiously enough it was you again who interested me in photography. I had taken pictures myself before that time, to be sure, . . . but it all goes back to that week in Cedar Rapids. When was it? 1914? 1915? . . .
"My most serious work is of course portraiture. These other things, as yet, are a sideline. . . .
"I had some exceptional opportunities to see Spain this time. Joan Miró, the Catalan painter, piloted me diligently about Barcelona for a week, and he is some pilot! . . ."
21 March [1936]: ". . . This sweet bull I brought home from Madrid. The wreath was for Christmas."