LETTER: Autograph letter signed, to Ruth Ford.
Johnson, Buffie. Autograph letter signed, “Buffie,” to “Dearest Goetz and Ruth [Ford],” January 17, 1944; 5 leaves of cotton stock in three colors; illustrated with original watercolor paintings; light wear and some tape repair.
A beautifully illustrated letter from artist Buffie Johnson to friends and actors Goetz van Eyck and Ruth Ford, featuring original watercolor vignettes on each leaf. Johnson begins by stating it was a letter “you should have received on the 25th of last month – lacks-a-day,” and that she “should write to you every day or not at all -- there is too much to tell.” After lamenting that Ford will not be coming to New York in the coming year, Johnson reports on her life, including her slow recovery from peritonitis; her new house, bought for her by her mother and extravagantly decorated by her; and her relative subsequent penury. She also comments on her recent portrait of Ford (“I keep flirting with the idea of giving [it] to you, Goetz, for being such a charming host”), and the news of van Eyck’s recent film success, stating “I think we’ll all be very famous and very rich and we’ve all been always happy even when we should have killed ourselves.” Johnson goes on, noting “I think that is our mutual point of departure – the knowledge that it is graceful and elegant to be always happy and ugly and boring to be sad. This is to tell you that at the moment I’m quite madly happy and working like an angel.” Johnson closes the letter by recommending Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzylitsky, which she states “will revolutionize the structure of our thinking.”
The expansive text floats around and in between six charming watercolor sketches and two border decorations. Three are on classical themes, depicting two female figures and a scene of Narcissus and Echo, and two are self-portraits of Johnson – one as Lucretia stabbing herself in the breast, the other as a 19th-century artist on the riverfront in New Jersey, with Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty in the background. The last is of a monkey tearing at an ornate armchair, which portrays the pet monkey Johnson had recently had to get rid of; she notes in the text beside it, “this is how he was -- quite pathetic. I couldn’t bear it.” Borders incorporating a sun, eye, and foliage complement the first and second leaves.
(#4657037)
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