George Gershwin was born Jacob Gershwine on September 26 1898 and died July 11 1937. He was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned jazz, popular and classical music. Among his best-known works are the songs Swanee (1919) and Fascinating Rhythm (1924), the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the jazz standards Embraceable You (1928) and I Got Rhythm (1930) and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the hit Summertime. His Of Thee I Sing (1931) was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Gershwin became fascinated with painting in the late 1920s. He began by buying pictures that appealed to him, works by Picasso, Rouault, Derain, Utrillo and by his friends Max Weber and Maurice Sterne. By 1933 his collection was big enough to rate an exhibition at the Chicago Arts Club. Gershwin himself started painting in 1929 and came along fast with a few tips and encouragement from his artist cousin, Henry A. Botkin. He liked to paint so much that in the year or two before his death he actually preferred it to composition at the piano, even thought of giving up his music. He was a great doodler and he used to scribble faces when he was on the telephone of which this is one example - with separated ink signature below.