Original Painting
(Los Angeles: circa 1949). Tempera on paper, mounted with glue onto cardboard, approx. 12 X 9 in. Small, partial fingernail puncture at upper left corner, a touch of flaking, edges roughly cut. Item #205717
Figure of a masked Harlequin, standing in front of a doorway and strumming a small triangular guitar-like instrument under a full moon. On the reverse, on the back of the cardboard, Bradbury has written his name (R. Bradbury) and his Clarkson road address. In a 2009 interview with the LA Times, Bradbury recalled that "painting has been part of my life since I was a child . . . My artwork doesn't inspire my writing, it's my writing that inspires my artwork." While we have not tied this particular image to a Bradbury text, the carnival figure evokes a milieu that appeared in Bradbury's fiction repeatedly, including his first book, Dark Carnival, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. (Provenance: the estate of LA musician, composer, and longtime UCLA faculty member Theodore Norman, who was given the painting by Bradbury).
Price: $12,500.00