INSCRIBED BY ACCLAIMED PHOTOGRAPHER WILLIAM GOTTLIEB

GOTTLIEB, William P. Large photogravure inscribed. New York: Bruce Teleky, 1998. Black-and-white photogravure, measuring 17 by 24 inches; framed, entire piece measures 18-1/2 by 24 inches. $850.

Poster-size black-and-white photogravure of Ella Fitzgerald singing as Dizzy Gillespie looks on, an image from William Gottlieb’s critically acclaimed The Golden Age of Jazz, inscribed below the caption: “to Joel from Bill Gottlieb.”

About Gottlieb's photographs, jazz historian Walter Schaap once commented, "They are such wonderful photographs and so typical of the artist they represented that it stuck in my memory that this is what Coleman Hawkins looked like, and this is what Lester Young looked like, and this is what Louis Armstrong looked like, so that today, when I recall these musicians whom I knew, I think of them in terms of what they look like in Bill's photographs." The pictures William Gottlieb took from 1938 to 1948 are "perhaps the most widely reproduced jazz images today" (Library of Congress). In 1938 Gottlieb began working for the Washington Post, where he wrote and illustrated a weekly jazz column— perhaps the first in a major newspaper. By age 22 he was known as "Mr. Jazz" in the Washington area and later became principal writer-photographer for Down Beat magazine. During the course of his career, Gottlieb took portraits of all the prominent jazz musicians and personalities, including Ella Fitzgerald (the subject here). "His portraits are well-thought-out character studies, not candids or pictures selected from dozens of exposures" (Library of Congress). This original photograph was published in Gottlieb's The Golden Age of Jazz (1979). The caption reads: "Ella with an 'entranced' Dizzy Gillespie. The bassist is Ray Brown, to whom Ella is married. The head in the foreground belongs to nobleman Timmie Rosenkrantz."

A fine photogravure, scarce inscribed.