Vahdah Gara

 

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)

c. 1928  

etching & color aquatint, printed a la poupée 

15 5/8 x 15 5/8" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

39/150 (likely fewer than 40 printed) 

pencil titled and editioned 

 

ivory simile vellum paper 

published 

artist 

23989 

$750.00 

The subject of this portrait, Vahdah Gara, was born Vahdah Gara Smith on April 11, 1889. She later became Vahdah Gara Low after marrying into the Low family, weathly utilities- and land-owners, in 1923. Her husband was Abbot Augustus Low, Jr., president of the Old Forge Electric Co. and later executive vice president of Consolidated Edison Company of New York. Vadah Gara Low died in New York in May of 1982. As Pollak was often commissioned to do portraits of well-to-do figures in the various cities he visited or lived in, it’s very likely he created this when he first came to the U.S. in the late 1920s. Pollak's subject is fashionable and daring in her attire, wearing richly hued fabrics that cling and drape like silk, and her expression is bright and engaging, making it all the more disappointing that we can’t find more about her.