Tennessee Williams:

An Inventory of His Art Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

Biographical Sketch

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 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 and briefly worked at a shoe store and on Parrott's uncle's pigeon farm. During this time he also received art lessons from Adelaide Parrott, a WPA art instructor, who was impressed by Williams' artistic talent.

In March of 1939, Williams won a Group Theatre award with American Blues, and gained greater success with The Glass Menagerie in 1944. His plays A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) 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.

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Scope and Contents

The collection consists of paintings, drawings, and prints by and related to Tennessee Williams. The collection is divided into the following series: I., Works by Tennessee Williams; II., Portraits of Tennessee Williams by Other Artists; and III., Works Related to Tennessee Williams.

Series I. is comprised of 22 paintings of still lifes, landscapes, and portraits Williams made of his friends, including a few paintings from his childhood years. These works are arranged by accession number. Series II. consists of three portraits of Tennessee Williams. Series III., Works Related to Tennessee Williams, includes a portrait of Tennessee 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 a drawing of Tennessee 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.

Additional portraits of Tennessee Williams, also held in the Art Collection, include works by Don Bachardy, David Levine, Emanuel Romano, and David Schorr. The Ransom Center also holds extensive Tennessee Williams' manuscripts and books in the Manuscripts Collection and Library respectively.

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Restrictions

Access:

A minimum of twenty-four hours is required to pull art materials to the Reading Room

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Administrative Information

Acquisition:

Purchases (R2913, R1963, R5900), and gift

Processed by:

Alice Egan, 1997, and Helen Young, 2001

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Sources:

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Tennessee Williams--Item List

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