Lot 275: The Work of Stowitts for the Fox-God: Lyric Ballet in 3

The Work of Stowitts for the Fox-God: Lyric Ballet in 3 Acts [47] + 50 plates and accompanying mounted text plates. Illustrated with 59 mounted color plates from paintings by Hubert Stowitts; decorations in red, brown and gilt throughout. Poem by Templeton Crocker. Music by Joseph Redding. (Folio) 15 1/4 x13, original full buckram, stamped and lettered in terra cotta, edges untrimmed. First American Edition. No. 34 of 400 copies. Signed by Stowitts on the limitation page. An elaborately produced volume containing the classic Chinese Opera "Fay-Yen-Fah," along with the traditional designs, costumes and decor, as illustrated in Stowitts decorations and color plates. Hubert Julian "Jay" Stowitts (1892-1953) was a dancer, artist, track and field star, and a student actor who attended the University of California, Berkeley from 1911-1915. He devoted his life as a professional dancer after being inspired by a ballet performance he saw in San Francisco. He was soon "discovered" by the famed Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova and traveled as a successful dancer throughout the Americas and Europe, becoming the first American to star with a Russian ballet troupe. After a solo career, Stowitts retired from dancing and began a new career as a painter and occasional film actor. He traveled and lived in the Far East and South Asia, where he produced 155 paintings he called "Vanishing India." At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, his exhibition of fifty-five paintings of nude male American athletes caused a "sensation." The Nazis closed the exhibit down, partly because it showed depictions of Jewish and African-American athletes. Includes a glossy reproduction from a photograph titled "La Pavlowa a Paris" with Anna Pavlova and Stowitts in a ballet performance in full costume, laid in.

1939

Corners and spine ends a bit crimped; binding somewhat shaken with some of the signatures slightly loose; pages and plates fine and bright, near fine or better overall - still an attractive copy of this scarce and important work.

Place: Hollywood, CA
Publisher: George Palmer Putnam