Lot 180: WIESE, KURT. 1887-1974. Two original drawings, ’Grasping a piece of broke

WIESE, KURT. 1887-1974. Two original drawings, ’Grasping a piece of broken tile, he stretched over, pushed at the firebrand’ + etc., being two variants of the same illustration for Young Fu Defies the Demon in Elizabeth Foreman Lewis, Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze (Chicago: John C. Winston Co., 1932), each drawing 216 x 178 mm, pen-and-ink, drybrush and pencil on paper, each identified in pencil in the artist’s hand beneath the drawing. Minor soiling and light dampstain. Framed with floating matte. WITH: A first edition of the book. 8vo. 265 pp. Original gilt st amped black cloth. Signed by both the author and the illustrator in ink on the title page. Former library copy with covers rubbed and some inner soiling and discoloring. Provenance: In Memory of William H. McAlarney, M. D. bookplate on recto of frontispiece. Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze won the Newbery Medal for former Methodist missionary and teacher Elizabeth Foreman Lewis (1892- 1958). The episodic novel derived from her observations while living in China and tells the story of a boy who lives in Chungking (now Chongqing), then the largest city in Szechuan (Sichuan) province and one of the country’s biggest cities. Wiese too had spent time in China and was considered a Chinese expert within the trade. It is not known if these two drawings were preliminary illustrations or intended for a later updated version of the award-winning children’s book. They are not in the style of the much darker, heavier drawings in the published book.