Rhapsody in Blue

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Rhapsody in Blue

1927

Earl Horter (American, 1880–1940)

This is the original artwork for a prize-winning advertisement created for the New York piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons, a client of the Philadelphia advertising firm N.W. Ayer & Son, where Earl Horter was employed as a freelance artist. A pianist himself, Horter intuitively grasped the spirit of George Gershwin's musical composition Rhapsody in Blue, which had premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1924. The composition is a lively appropriation of the 1912 painting Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin (now in New York's Museum of Modern Art) by the Futurist artist Gino Severini; Horter replaced motifs in Severini's painting with images appropriate to his own subject.

Currently not on view

Object Details

Title:

Rhapsody in Blue

Date:

1927

Artist:

Earl Horter (American, 1880–1940)

Medium:

Opaque watercolor and graphite on board

Dimensions:

Sheet: 21 7/16 × 27 1/2 inches (54.5 × 69.9 cm) Framed: 24 1/2 × 30 3/4 × 1 1/2 inches (62.2 × 78.1 × 3.8 cm)

Classification:

Drawings

Credit Line:

Bequest of an anonymous donor, 2003

Accession Number:

2003-162-1

Geography:

Made in United States, North and Central America

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