![[STEIN, Gertrude (1874-1936) and Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Gerald Hugh, LORD BERNERS].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/CKS/2018_CKS_16023_0015_001(stein_gertrude_and_tyrwhitt-wilson_gerald_hugh_lord_berners013703).jpg?w=1)
![[STEIN, Gertrude (1874-1936) and Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Gerald Hugh, LORD BERNERS].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/CKS/2018_CKS_16023_0015_002(stein_gertrude_and_tyrwhitt-wilson_gerald_hugh_lord_berners013716).jpg?w=1)
![[STEIN, Gertrude (1874-1936) and Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Gerald Hugh, LORD BERNERS].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/CKS/2018_CKS_16023_0015_003(stein_gertrude_and_tyrwhitt-wilson_gerald_hugh_lord_berners013729).jpg?w=1)
![[STEIN, Gertrude (1874-1936) and Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Gerald Hugh, LORD BERNERS].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/CKS/2018_CKS_16023_0015_000(stein_gertrude_and_tyrwhitt-wilson_gerald_hugh_lord_berners111851).jpg?w=1)
PROPERTY FROM FARINGDON HOUSE, OXFORDSHIRE, LOTS 1-145
[STEIN, Gertrude (1874-1936) and Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Gerald Hugh, LORD BERNERS].
Details
[STEIN, Gertrude (1874-1936) and Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Gerald Hugh, LORD BERNERS].
Manuscript sketches, set and costume designs titled ‘Faust/Gertrude Stein/(Drawings)’, n.d. [c.1938]. 19 pages (308 x 232mm; on leaves torn from a spiral-bound notebook), pen and ink sketches often heightened with watercolour. Tipped into notebook covers.
In 1938, Lord Berners received the finished libretto for the opera Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights from his friend, Gertrude Stein; after the success of their 1937 ballet, A Wedding Bouquet, the two had planned another collaborative project, for which he was to compose the music. However, on 3 December 1939 he wrote despairingly: ‘all inspirational sources seem to have dried up: I can’t write a note of music or do any kind of creative work whatever […] and I don’t believe I shall be able to as long as this war lasts’. Their abandoned project was completed after both of their deaths; it was first produced in 1951 at the Cherry Theatre, New York with music supplied by Richard Banks. The present sketches, perhaps commissioned by Berners, offer a glimpse of the production that never was.
[With:] STEIN, Gertrude (1874-1946). Geography and Plays. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1922. Inscribed by the author; – Lucy Church Amiably. Paris: Imprimerie Union, 1930. Inscribed by the author; – Operas and Plays. Paris: Plain Edition, [1932]. Inscribed by the author; – Last Operas and Plays. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1949. Inscribed by the editor Carl Van Vechten; – How to Write. Paris: Plain Edition, [1931].
Manuscript sketches, set and costume designs titled ‘Faust/Gertrude Stein/(Drawings)’, n.d. [c.1938]. 19 pages (308 x 232mm; on leaves torn from a spiral-bound notebook), pen and ink sketches often heightened with watercolour. Tipped into notebook covers.
In 1938, Lord Berners received the finished libretto for the opera Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights from his friend, Gertrude Stein; after the success of their 1937 ballet, A Wedding Bouquet, the two had planned another collaborative project, for which he was to compose the music. However, on 3 December 1939 he wrote despairingly: ‘all inspirational sources seem to have dried up: I can’t write a note of music or do any kind of creative work whatever […] and I don’t believe I shall be able to as long as this war lasts’. Their abandoned project was completed after both of their deaths; it was first produced in 1951 at the Cherry Theatre, New York with music supplied by Richard Banks. The present sketches, perhaps commissioned by Berners, offer a glimpse of the production that never was.
[With:] STEIN, Gertrude (1874-1946). Geography and Plays. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1922. Inscribed by the author; – Lucy Church Amiably. Paris: Imprimerie Union, 1930. Inscribed by the author; – Operas and Plays. Paris: Plain Edition, [1932]. Inscribed by the author; – Last Operas and Plays. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1949. Inscribed by the editor Carl Van Vechten; – How to Write. Paris: Plain Edition, [1931].
Brought to you by
Celia Harvey