Woolf S J, Signed (4 results)

WOOLF, S.J. HERE AM I. NY: Random House, [1941]. 8vo., off-white cloth stamped in gilt. First Edition. Signed by Woolf on half-title page., with Woolf adding what appears to be a Morse code message. Very Good (some soil covers). $50.00.

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. Dust Jacket Condition: good. Cloth/dust jacket Octavo. brown boards, gilt lettering, dust jacket, 172 pp signed by Le Roy Ladurie on front free endpaper dust jacket lightly worn Standard shipping (no tracking or insurance) / Priority (with tracking) / Custom quote for large or heavy orders.

WOOLF, S.J. HERE AM I. NY: Random House, [1941]. 8vo., cream-colored cloth in (supplied) dust jacket. First Edition. Signed presentation from Woolf on half-title page, to New York Times Magazine editor Lester Markel: "As usual, Can't get rid of me. S. J. Woolf. For Lester Markel." Autobiography of a famous artist and journalist whose work was featured in The New York Times for decades. Very Good (soil & some dampstaining covers); little wear d/j. $150.00.

No Binding. Condition: Very Good. Very Good. The original charcoal portrait used to illustrate S. J. Woolf's article on Alexander Fleming ("Man of Science and of Penicillin. Sir Alexander Fleming Talks of His Discovery and Its Future Promise"), published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine July 29, 1945. It was later exhibited at the Princeton University Library in 1949 as no. 10 in "Drawn from Life by S. J. Woolf--Original Charcoal Portraits of Contemporary Notables--First Published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine 1923-1946." In 1932 Woolf published his book entitled Drawn from Life: "There is no surer way of getting to know a person than by drawing his picture. The silence that is broken only by the scratch of charcoal upon paper or brush on canvas seems to remove restraint. The artist has his sitter at an unfair advantage. One is working; the other sits quietly self-conscious. It rarely happens that the subject does not relax and as a usual thing in a short time he starts to talk. In this respect the man who also draws has an advantage over his less fortunate brother who only writes. His victim is disarmed. Nothing makes for taciturnity or at least care in what is said so much as a writer's pad and pencil; nothing is so likely to make even a shy person talk as the quietness of a room in which some one else is working. And so, sitting in their offices, in their homes, or in their workshops, these men have talked to me while I have been drawing their portraits. The light and shade falling upon their heads brought out their features and I tried to reproduce what I saw, while at the same time I jotted down the high lights of their conversations on the margin of the paper. In both cases I have endeavored to give the impression that the subjects made upon me. My drawings are not photographs nor are the articles phonographic reproductions. A broad sweeping line may better portray the contour of a face than a narrow halting one which delineates distracting details, and the same is true of quotations. A man's speech, in both manner and subject, has as many characteristics as his nose or eyes or mouth. In a drawing the artist seizes upon those forms which to him appear vital and perhaps exaggerates them in order to convey the impression that his sitter makes. I have done the same thing in words that I have done in line (pp. 4-5)." Woolf wrote of Alexander Fleming in his 1945 New York Times article: "A little over a year ago I went to see Prof. Alexander Fleming. . . . Rummaging through a cluttered closet he took out a small, hermetically sealed glass tray and handing it to me said, 'Entombed in here are the ancestors of most of the penicillin in the world.' The other day when I again saw the bacteriologist who discovered in certain molds one of the most powerful agents in the fight against microbes, I recalled this incident to him. He got up from his chair, went over to the bed in his hotel room, picked up his rumpled coat and pulled from a pocket a small, round glass locket resembling a monocle, in which there was a small object that looked like a flower. 'Here,' he said, 'are some of the descendants of that original mold'." NOTE: A copy of Woolf's 1932 book Drawn from Life containing 42 portraits is included. Samuel Johnson Woolf (1880-1948) is represented in collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York Public Library; University of Michigan; College of the City of New York; Brook Club; Catholic Club; etc. His work was exhibited at the National Academy of Design; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Carnegie; Corcoran; and St. Louis Expo (See Mantle Fielding, Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers (1986), pp. 1057-58). Julie Melby, "Drawn from Life", Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol 73, no. 3, Spring 2012, pp. 481-483. Signed by Author(s).