Ella Fitzgerald is a wood engraving created in 1999 by American painter and printmaker, James Gilbert Todd. It is pencil signed, titled, dated, and editioned 8/50. It also bears the artist’s red seal after the date. Ella Fitzgerald was printed by the artist on ivory Kitakata wove paper and the image measures 11 x 8-5/8 inches. It is illustrated on page 55 in Jazz Icons: Wood Engravings, Wood Cuts, and Paintings by James Gilbert Todd.
Ella Fitzgerald was dubbed “The First Lady of Song” for her perfect pitch and stunning vocal range. She could sing with a jazz ensemble or a philharmonic orchestra and could mimic every instrument in an orchestra. Ella recorded over 200 albums, sold over forty million albums, won thirteen Grammy awards, and performed twenty-six concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York. She was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for half a century.
James Gilbert Todd, painter, printmaker, illustrator, and educator, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 12, 1937. Todd attended the College of Great Falls, Montana from 1956 to 1959, and then continued his studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. Todd received his MFA in painting and printmaking in 1970 from the University of Montana. He taught in Western Germany between 1965 and 1968, but returned to Montana where was Professor of Humanities at the University of Montana from 1971-80, and then Professor of Art from 1980-2000 when he retired. He has lived over forty years in Missoula, Montana in the Northwest Rocky Mountains.
Todd is a member of the Association Jean Chieze in France, the Wood Engravers Network in the United States, the Society of Wood Engravers and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in the United Kingdom. He illustrated the books, A Radiant Map of the World by Rick Newby, Still Another Day by Pablo Neruda, and Woman Who Lives in the Earth by Swain Wolfe. His work is in the collections of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture; the Montana Historical Society; the Jiangsu Provincial Fine Arts Museum in China; the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts; the Oaxaca Museum in Mexico; the Regensburg Museum, Germany; and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.
