Alice by Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald

"Ella Fitzgerald, an accomplished writer and dancer, and the wife of acclaimed author F. Scott Fitzgerald, began painting in 1925 when she took her first lesson. After an emotional breakdown in 1930 she was encouraged by doctors in Switzerland to paint as part of her therapy. She painted flowers, landscapes and cityscapes, and made several series of paper dolls for her daughter.

Her six gouaches (opaque watercolors) illustrating chapters in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and her fairy tale and nursery rhyme series, all from the 1940s, are considered her best work.

Fitzgerald used explosive color and dramatic compositions to illustrate the complexity of double meanings, satire, morals, and absurdities found in the literary texts. Because much of her art was done during concentrated periods while she was in and out of mental institutions, there is no complete record of her works. Some were lost and others were destroyed in the 1948 fire that took Fitzgerald's life at a Highland, N.C. mental hospital."

found at meier museum of art