Portrait photograph of Shirley Graham DuBois, inscribed to Saul Mauriber.
New York: July 18, 1946.
Price: $1,500.00
About the item
Half-length in profile. Gelatin silver print. 1 vols. 25.1 x 18.8 cm. (9-7/9 x 7-3/8 inches). Blind stamp on recto, lower right. Atelier stamped on verso, with notations in ink giving the subject of the photograph, the date, and the number of the negative. Provenance: The estate of Saul Mauriber, Van Vechten's assistant and executor of Van Vechten's photography estate and the compiler of PORTRAITS: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF CARL VAN VECHTEN (1978).
Item #222335
Fine, inscribed portrait, and a rare image of the playwright and historian Shirley Graham (1896-1977). Graham was the author of several plays, including "Elijah's Ravens" (1930), "Tom-Tom" (1932), "Dust to Earth" (1940), and "It's Morning" (1940). Graham was also a serious historian of Afro-American history, and wrote biographies of Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Benjamin Banneker, and Paul Robeson. In 1951, she married W.E.B. Du Bois a year after the death of his first wife Nina, and over the next several years the two were involved together in various struggles with the government over Du Bois' involvement with the Communist Party. In 1961, the two emigrated to Ghana and became citizens there at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah.
Graham inscribed this photo "To Saul, gratefully, Shirley Graham"
