Painting by jazz legend to go up for auction
LARGE ACRYLIC ON CANVAS EXPECTED TO MAKE £8-12K
THE American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis is revered as one of the greats of 20th century music, perhaps even the greatest jazz musician of the age. Less well known is the fact that he was also a painter, a quite remarkable painter.
Davis had always done a bit of drawing but things only got serious after he suffered a minor stroke in 1982 when he was in his mid-fifties.
Unable to perform and with doctors advising that holding a pencil would help him recuperate from a frozen hand, he began sketching with a passion.
It would change his life, quite literally. Another resident in the apartment block where he lived was an artist and sculptor called Jo Gelbard.
A request for advice led to friendship, romance and the ‘Prince of Darkness’ (as he was known in the jazz world) moving on from sketching to paint and canvas.
For the next half dozen years, until his death at the age of 65 in 1991, Davis painted obsessively, painting became as important to the great jazz trumpeter as music.
The art of Miles Davis is complex: Bold, colourful, geometric, abstract and expressionist.
Numerous influences can be detected in his pictures including those of the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Picasso (1881-1973), the New York painter Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), plus Jo Gelbard of course, and traditional African art.
Given that Davis’s artistic period was so brief, less than ten years, it is hardly surprising that his paintings rarely come up for auction, especially in this country, and so we were delighted to be asked to sell a picture that has been shown in Davis’s exhibitions in New York, London and Paris.
It also featured in the New York gallery director Scott Gutterman’s 1991 book ‘The Art of Miles Davis.’
The picture is titled ‘White and Naked,’ a large acrylic on canvas that was owned for several years by Davis’s mentor, muse and girlfriend Jo Gelbard.
Ownership later passed to a specialist art dealership and the picture was at a 2010 Davis Retrospective Exhibition in London when it was acquired by an English trumpet player who had a total passion for all things Miles Davis.
It had pride of place in his music room until his death last year.
How much will it make? Davis results at auction tend to start at around a thousand pounds but have topped £40,000 on at least one occasion.
This painting is expected to make £8,000-£12,000 when it goes under the hammer in a Fine Art Auction at the York Auction Centre on Friday, May 10.
The sale catalogue is available on the firm’s website (www.dugglebystephenson.com). Viewing is taking place throughout the week ahead of the sale.