Boardman Robinson (1876-1952) Reds ''Our Elder Statesmen Investigate the Bolsheviks'' Pen, waxed crayon and heightened with bodycolour, 40 x 55cm Signed and inscribed as above, with the dedication...

Boardman Robinson (1876-1952) Reds ''Our Elder Statesmen Investigate the Bolsheviks'' Pen, waxed crayon and heightened with bodycolour, 40 x 55cm Signed and inscribed as above, with the dedication to Louise Bryant B.R. Provenance: The Estate of Anne Bullitt These extraordinary cartoons illustrate a rare moment in American history. Louise Bryant (Anne Bullitt's mother) and her husband Jack Reed, together with a small band of American radicals witnessed the October Revolution. Both Reed and Bryant wrote extensively of their experiences, avoiding almost any reference to each other, and these accounts are the most objective and detailed of western eye-witnesses to the momentous events. As the Russian Revolution became more extreme and bloody, culminating with the betrayal of the allies at Brest Litovsk, which enabled Germany to move its eastern army to the Western Front, American communists were treated by the confused establishment with increasing hostility. Boardman's depiction of Louise Bryant, whom he knew so well, as a shrinking violet is meant to be ironic. A feminist, a communist, a playwright, they didn't come tougher. Robinson acted as a war reporter in Russia for the radical magazine The Masses.

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