[New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928].
Price: $12,500.00
Unbound. Original tempera painting for the dust jacket of Carl Van Vechten's novel *Spider Boy* by noted gay artist and designer Ronald McRae. The image measures 6½" x 7½" on a 15" x 7½ sheet that shows light creases at the edges where it was once folded around a book (likely by McRae himself) to check how the wraparound art would appear on the finished cover and spine. Unsigned (as is the finished dust jacket). Fine. A Hollywood star waves to the adoring multitudes as her entourage looks on, and a flash camera goes off in the left foreground. The painted lettering was changed to an entirely different font for the finished jacket, and the rest of the image shows minor variations, mostly in color. A very nearly final version, and the only existing painting of the jacket of which we are aware. An iconic and wonderfully evocative image of the Jazz Age. The satiric novel featured a mildly successful playwright, Ambrose Deacon, who is lured to Hollywood and is pressed into service as a screenwriter for an egotistical superstar. Ambrose has no clue about film but rapidly discovers that no one in Hollywood cares, as long as he lends his modest prestige to tinsel town's pretensions. [With]: a second printing of the novel, very good in very good dustwrapper.
Item #368334