[GRAPHICS & ILLUSTRATION - ORIGINAL ARTWORK] KENT, Rockwell (artwork & design); WEXLEY, John (author)

Original Dustjacket Artwork for The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg [Together with] The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg [Inscribed to Morton & Helen Sobell]

New York: Cameron & Kahn, 1955. First Edition. Original illustration, composed in ink, gouache, and drybrush on art paper, measuring 30.5cm x 31.5cm (12" x 12.5"); titled by Kent in pencil along the lower margin ("Jacket design for The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, by James Wexley"), and signed by him (in pencil) at lower right corner. Faint trace of soil to margins, with a small patch (5cm x 1cm) of correction fluid applied toward upper left corner of image; mounted on mat board along upper edge, tastefully double-matted behind glass and gallery frame.

Offered together with a first printing of the book. Octavo (22cm); brown paper-covered boards and beige cloth backstrip, with titles stamped in black on spine; dustjacket; xiv,672pp. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author to the Sobell family on the front endpaper: "To Helen and Morton, Sidney [sic] and Mark / For that great day soon! John Wexley." Extremities worn, with board exposure along lower edges, and some soil and staining to text edges; backstrip showing splitting along the joints, some creasing, and tears at crown; contents are clean; Good. Dustjacket is unclipped (priced $6.00), heavily worn, creased, and soiled, with a long tear along the front panel, shallow losses along both edges, and a larger chip at base of spine and lower rear panel; Good only.

Wexley (1907-1985) was a New York dramatist who moved to Hollywood in the 1940's and achieved success as a screenwriter, later falling victim to the Blacklist for his earlier Communist Party affiliation. Blacklisted around the time of publication, Wexley's lengthy defense of the Rosenbergs was in part also an attack on the inquisitorial methods of HUAC, and the climate of red baiting that had so profoundly disrupted his own life and the lives of his colleagues in Hollywood.

Kent's jacket illustration is one of the truly iconic modernist book-cover designs of the 20th century, on a parallel – in quality if not in public recognition – with his commissions for Frankenstein and Moby Dick for Random House. Kent's sympathies for figures on the left, especially those persecuted under HUAC, is well-known, and at one point he had even contemplated his own career in progressive politics, running for Congress on the American Labor Party ticket (in support of Henry Wallace) in 1948. Kent's personal relationship with the Rosenbergs is less well-documented, and it is not clear from the current context whether the drawing came to the Sobells directly from Kent or through the agency of Wexley. Kent was in any case an active supporter of clemency for the Rosenbergs; his letter to President Harry Truman, advocating commutation of their death sentences, is among the Kent papers at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. Sketches and studies for the jacket are in the Rockwell Kent Collection at Columbia University, but ours is by all appearances the final, camera-ready drawing used for the jacket itself.

While original Kent illustrations appear on the market with some regularity, few of his major designs remain in private hands. This example certainly one of the best remaining, with direct provenance from the Sobell family.

Provenance: From the collection of Dr. Helen Levitov Sobell (1918-2002), through the trade, from her descendants.

Price: $25,000.00

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