Wilder, Thornton Signed ALSO ALS 1948; The Ides of March Signed
, HARPERS & BROTHERS, 1948 FIRST ED, HARD BACK
Overall Condition is: GOOD
Signed & inscribed in pen on pre-title page by Thornton Wilder, For Elena de Hellebranth and Bertha de Hellebranth with the regaqrd of Thornton Wilder, Atlantic City, NJ, March 15 1948. Also included is a autographed letter signed (ALS), handwritten on note paper, that was mailed to Miss Elena Hellbranth, envelope is postmarked New Haven, Conn; Apr. 20 1946. The autographed handwritten letter has the letterhead, 50 Deepwood Drive, Hamden 14. Connecticut, and the letter states, April 20-1946, Dear Miss Hellebranth, Many thanks for thinking of me in reference to Ned Sheldon's death. All his friends , too, are writing one another in dismay and grief at his death. I remember with much pleasure the congenial evening at Miss Taylor's home and the drive home with yourself and your sister. Many thanks again for your expressive letter, Sincerely Yours, Thornton Wilder. ALSO included are newspaper clippings on The Ides of March, some of which are, 1) NY Times, Feb. 18, 1948, announcing books that were published on that day, 2) NY Times full front page, section 2, March 25, 1962, written by Lewis Funke about Jerome Kilty's dramatization of Thornton Wilder's Ides of March. Bertha de Hellebranth and her sister 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. Both sisters showed artistic potential early, beginning to paint at four or five years of age. Their parents encouraged them, and had the means to send them to the best art schools of the time. 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. 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 Ventnor, NJ (the next city over from Atlatnic City, 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 museums and galleries too numerous to mention. Elena settled in Atlantic City, NJ. Neither she nor Bertha married. We do know that Bertha died at age 81, in December of 1980. Elena outlived her by eight years, dying in February 1988, at age 91. Much of their work from the 1920’s through the 1940’s was donated by their sister-in-law in her will to the American Hungarian Foundation in 2001. Museum exhibition records indicate that they continued to paint, sculpt and show their work throughout the 1950’s and 60’s and perhaps even longer,” wrote Patricia Fazekas. But no samples of their later works were found in their home, leaving us to guess whether their style or subject matter had changed. Thus the de Hellebranth sisters remain a partial enigma to this day. Book has general shelf wear, slightly rubbed extremities, slightly cocked spine, a 1.5 X 2.5 bookplate on front endpage, somewhat age-toned endpages, good binding, clean and unmarked. States first edition M-W on copyright page.
REF#:088628