In the Money: White Mule Part II

signed by author on the front end paper, gilt on spine, foxing, pages yellowing, text block clean, princeton antiques bookplate on inside of front cover, dj torn at edges WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS A PHYSICIAN AND POET AND THE DE HELLEBRANTH FAMILY WERE VERY CLOSE. OUR COLLECTION OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS WAS PURCHASED FROM THE HOME IN VENTNOR THE CITY NEXT TO OUR GREAT ATLANTIC CITY. Roland De Hellebranth A Doctor who performed surgeries at home and sisters Bertha de Hellebranth and Elena were born into a cultured upper-class family in Budapest, Bertha in 1899, Elena in 1897. Their father was a lawyer and their mother a student of Franz Liszt's last living pupil. They studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Budapest, at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and painted portraits of European nobility. As Patricia Fazekas points out, "Growing up in a family of privilege, they seemed to have unusual access to many illustrious people." So we should not be surprised to find among their subjects members of high society, such as Count Andrássy Gyula, the Russian-born Princess Baby Galitzine, and Admiral Horthy Miklós, the Regent. Later on, their subjects included American heiress Gladys Vanderbilt (Countess László Széchenyi), President Theodore Roosevelt's granddaughter Paulina Longworth and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Often, the sisters would paint the same subject at the same time, offering the sitter a choice of portraits. Most often, the sitter wanted both renditions. While Elena concentrated on working in oil and watercolor, Bertha used gouache and oil to achieve her effects. Elena gave lectures and workshops, was a writer and also wrote popular and ecclesiastical music, while Bertha also went in for sculpture and handicrafts. From the mid-thirties until World War II, Bertha and Elena divided their time between their home in Budapest and a home on the ocean at 109 S Frankfort ave, Ventnor, NJ. In 1925, they showed their work at the Nemzeti Szalon in Budapest, and in 1926, they had a joint exhibition of their portraits in the US. Both exhibited their work at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and most major museums and galleries in the US. Bertha also had exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both Bertha and Elena were Fellows of the Royal Society of Art (London), and garnered numerous prizes. Bertha was awarded First Prize by the National Academy of the American Water Color Society one year, and the Grand Prize of the Audubon Society. She was one of the founders of the now defunct World League of Hungarian Artists Abroad (Külföldi Magyar Képzomuvészek Világszövetsége), and received a Gold Medal from the Cleveland Árpád Akadémia in 1963. (Elena also received the Akadémia's gold medal in 1965.) Their work is found in numerous museums. The de Hellebranth sisters were devout Catholics, and this is evident in their many portraits of clerics and religious subjects. Bertha's religious sculptures include not only the Patrona Hungariae which was given to St. Emery Church by the Transylvanian Franciscans in 1957, but also several now in the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation in New Brunswick, NJ, as for example a statue of St. Francis and another of Christ. Elena contributed several folk style panels to the Hungarian Pavilion's display at the 1939 New York World's Fair, while Bertha exhibited a couple of sculptures, one entitled "Sleeping Shepherd". Bertha and Elena became American citizens in the 1940's, but as Elena remarked, "While we are Americans, the Hungarian blood still boils through us." And Patricia Fazekas relates, DATE PUBLISHED: 1940 EDITION: 382.…