Before he hid his daughter’s name in caricatures, Al Hirschfeld created this color drawing for the 1954 album cover of The Golden Apple, Broadway’s version of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Rejoice in the flamboyant headdresses costume designers gave to the female characters: a Japanese fan, Indian feathers, a French plume, and a bandeau. Al drew them in such marvellous art deco style.
The Margot Feiden Galleries have the copyrights to sell his drawings, most of which are in black and white. I wonder if she has the original color art of this one. What’s fun is that my father’s name is on the bottom of the album cover.
For more enjoyable research, you may listen to
Thanks for including this wonderful Hirschfeld drawing. This work was actually done after Nina’s birth in November of 1945. I would have to look at this work more closely to determine if there is a NINA in it, but at this point, Hirschfeld did not include a number next to his name to indicate how many NINAs were in a drawing.
You can look up everything Hirschfeld did by performer, production, year, publication date, and/or genre by visiting http://www.alhirschfeldfoundation.org. The Foundation holds the copyrights to his work and the Feiden Galleries administers them for the Foundation.
I have looked at The Feiden Gallery site extensively. The drawing of Zero as Tevye was a personal favorite, as Zero was one of my father’s best friends, and I knew him well as a child. I have two paintings of Zero’s and 5 color drawings he did of me when I was born.
The other Hirschfeld work that blew me away was John Lennon and the WTC. Thank you so much for visiting my blog and pointing me to your foundation. I will look up the exact provenance of The Golden Apple drawing and amend my post. Hirschfeld was fabulous. I love him. Kindest regards…