Lot 89: ANTON BRUEHL 1900-1982

'HARLEM NUMBER, AT THE VERSAILLE CAFÉ'

measurements note
13 7/8 by 11 in. (35.4 by 28 cm.)

color carbro print, mounted to thick board, signed by the photographer in pencil on the mount, signed by him in pencil on the reverse, matted, 1943

PROVENANCE

Christie's New York, 26 April 1988, Sale 6584, Lot 122

Acquired by the Gilman Paper Company from the above

LITERATURE

Other prints of this image:

Bonnie Yochelson, Anton Bruehl (Howard Greenberg Gallery, 1998), p. 18

Therese Mulligan and David Wooters, eds., Photographs from 1839 to Today: George Eastman House (Köln, 2000), p. 565

NOTE

Bonnie Yochelson, in her catalogue Anton Bruehl (Howard Greenberg Gallery, 1998), discusses the genesis of the Esquire Canteen series, in which this image was featured.

During World War II, Esquire magazine hired Bruehl to create the Esquire Canteen, a series of photographs depicting fictional New York City night club scenes, made for the men of the armed forces. Each month a photograph of a different night club act was featured in the Canteen, accompanied by a story about the entertainers. Harlem Number, at the Versailles Café, was the Canteen image in the July 1943 issue. The photograph spotlights Eleonor Fairchild and her dapper partner Hugh Ellsworth.

Notes in the Gilman Paper Company's files state that this photograph was one of only three examples of the image that were in the photographer's estate. There is a larger version of this image at the George Eastman House, Rochester (cf. Yochelson, p. 6).