The collection consists of paintings, drawings, and prints by
and related to Tennessee Williams. Art by Williams includes twenty-six paintings of
still
lifes, landscapes, and portraits of his friends, including a few paintings from his
childhood years.
Call Number:
AR-00299
Language:
No linguistic material
Access:
Open for research. Please note that a minimum of 24 hours notice is required to pull
Art
Collection materials to the Ransom Center's Reading and Viewing Room. Some materials
may be
restricted from viewing. To make an appointment or to reserve Art Collection materials,
please contact the Center's staff at art@hrc.utexas.edu. Researchers must create an
online
Research Account and agree to the Materials Use Policy before using archival materials.
Use Policies:
Ransom Center collections may contain material with sensitive or confidential information
that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers
are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable
living
individuals represented in the collections without the consent of those individuals
may have
legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy
may
arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be
deemed
highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the Ransom Center and The University
of
Texas at Austin assume no responsibility.
Restrictions on Use:
Authorization for publication is given on behalf of the University of Texas as the
owner of
the collection and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright
holder
which must be obtained by the researcher. For more information please see the Ransom
Center's Open Access and Use Policies.
Administrative Information
Preferred Citation
Tennessee Williams Art Collection (AR-00389). Harry Ransom Center, The University
of Texas
at Austin.
The playwright Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams, III, on March 26,
1911,
in Columbus, Mississippi, to Cornelius Coffin and Edwina Dakin Williams. He spent
his early
childhood in Mississippi and Tennessee before his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri,
in
1918. Williams started writing at an early age, and he showed early artistic ability.
He
briefly attended the University of Missouri and Washington University in St. Louis
before
graduating from the University of Iowa in 1938. A few months after graduation, he
moved to
New Orleans, where he soon became friends with a clarinetist, Jim Parrott. In early
1939,
Williams went with Parrott to Los Angeles hoping to find a screenwriting job and briefly
worked on Parrott’s uncle’s pigeon farm. During this time he also received art lessons
from
Parrott’s mother Adelaide, a WPA art instructor, who was impressed by Williams’ artistic
talent. After this, Williams sketched and painted often, and he continued to do so
for the
rest of his life. For subjects, he turned to his mother Edwina, his sister Rose, and
friends, including Jim Parrott. As his writing career developed he also painted characters
from his plays. Later in life while living in Key West, Florida, Williams received
further
lessons from Henry Faulkner, with whom he also exhibited works. At this point he also
created limited edition portfolios which he sold in New York through Gotham Book Mart.
In March of 1939, Williams won a $100 Group Theatre Prize for five one-act plays,
which
were later published in 1948 as American Blues, as well as a
$1,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for Battle of Angels. He gained even greater success with The Glass Menagerie in 1944. His plays A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) both won Pulitzer Prizes. Other
successful plays included Suddenly Last Summer (1958),
Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and Night of the Iguana (1961). Williams also wrote two novels, film
scripts, poetry, essays, short stories, and his autobiography, Memoirs (1975). He died February 25, 1983, in New York City.
Sources:
Leverich, L. Tom, the Unknown Tennessee Williams. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1995.
"Tennessee Williams."Contemporary Authors, New Revision
Series, vol. 31, ed. J. G. Lewniak. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1990.
Scope and Contents
The collection consists of paintings, drawings, and prints by and related to the playwright
Tennessee Williams (American, 1911-1983). The collection is divided into the following
series: I. Works by Tennessee Williams, 1928-1947, 1981, undated; II. Portraits of
Tennessee
Williams by Other Artists, 1962, undated; and III. Works Related to Tennessee Williams,
1940s-1980, undated.
Series I. is comprised of twenty-six paintings and drawings of still lifes, landscapes,
and
portraits Williams made of his friends, including a few paintings from his childhood
years.
One of the paintings, "By that time Summer and Smoke were past...," takes its title
from a
line in Hart Crane's poem, Emblems of Conduct. The works in
this series are arranged by accession number. Series II. consists of four portraits
of
Williams created by various artists, and they are arranged alphabetically by artist
surname.
Series III., Works Related to Tennessee Williams, includes a portrait of Williams'
maternal
grandfather, Dr. Dakin; a dust jacket design by Cecil Beaton for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone; a preliminary sketch by Thomas Hart
Benton for his painting The Poker Night, which was used
on the cover of the Signet paperback edition of Streetcar Named Desire; and drawings of Williams' dog, Buffo, by the
actress Anna Magnani, who won an Oscar for her role in the screen version of The Rose Tattoo. These works are arranged alphabetically by artist
surname.
Related Material
Additional portraits of Tennessee Williams, also held in the Art Collection, include
works
by Don Bachardy, David Levine, Emanuel Romano, and David Schorr. Extensive Tennessee
Williams manuscript holdings are held in the Tennessee Williams Collection (MS-04535)
and in
several smaller collection. Photographs by and of Williams can be found in Tennessee
Williams Literary File Photography Collection (PH-02858) and in other Literary Files
of the
Photography Collection (PH-00281).
