STUART DAVIS
Composers of Musical Comedy.

Brush and ink on Strathmore laid paper, circa 1920. 635x481 mm; 25x19 inches. Signed in ink, upper left recto and titled in ink, lower right recto and in pencil, lower sheet edge recto.

Provenance: The Downtown Gallery, New York, with the label; The Edith Gregor Halpert Collection, with the ink stamp; in the sale of Halpert's estate, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., New York, May 16, 1973, sale 3520, lot 21; Benno Bordiga, New York; Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, with the label; Sotheby's, New York, October 10, 2007, lot 14; Kraushaar Galleries, with the label; private collection, New York.

Exhibited: "The Edith Gregor Halpert Collection," The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 28-November 11, 1962; "20th Century American Drawings," The Downtown Gallery, New York, September 9-October 2, 1964; "Figuratively Considered: Works on Paper by Selected Artists Who Participated in the 1913 Exhibition of Modern Art," Kraushaar Galleries, New York, March 1-April 6, 2013, with the label.

Published: The Little Review, volume 7, number 2, July-August 1920, illustrated, page 15; Patricia Hills, Stuart Davis, New York, 1996, page 57; Flora Miller Biddle, The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made: A Family Memoir, New York, 1999, page 83; A. Boyajian and M. Rutkoski, Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, 2007, volume II, page 511, number 1056 (illustrated).

The present work on paper is related to a later illustration Davis created for Ring Lardner's short story, Rhythm, which was published in Art News Annual in November 1947.