This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/25/2023
CLIVETTE, Merton (1868 – 1931). Four Works by “The Man in Black.” Comprising of: Confession of a Palmist. Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1908. Color pictorial boards (rubbed) over red cloth spine. Color frontispiece and illustrations by the author. 8vo. Fair. - - Café Cackle from Dumps to Delmonico’s. Chicago: Laird & Lee, (1909). Color pictorial boards over red cloth spine. Portrait frontispiece; over 100 sketches by the author. 8vo. Front hinge weak, else near fine. - - IT. Chicago: M.A. Donohue, 1905. Offset black-and-white wraps. 8vo. Fair. - - and another edition; New York: Published at the Sign of the Sphinx (1922). Pictorial red wraps bearing a silhouette portrait of the “man in black of Greenwich Village.” 8vo. Wraps chipped and weak. - - Sold together with a color postcard with artwork by Clivette on the recto. Although Clivette’s first career was on the stage – as a magician and shadowgraphist of some note in wild west shows and vaudeville – he retired from the theater and became a noted expressionist artist and helped define the ashcan school, haunting Greenwich Village locales and making an enviable reputation for himself as a painter (he had studied with Rodin in his formative years). While we have been able to locate institutional copies of these works, none have been traced on the open market or at auction since their publication.