Books and Manuscripts

Maurice Sendak pens a highly personal illustrated letter to his psychiatrist Bert Slaff

Rome: Pensione Tea, July 28, 1953. One sheet, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. (298 x 209 mm). Lengthy illustrated letter by Maurice Sendak, to his psychiatrist and friend Bertram Slaff. Signed by Sendak, and inscribed: "Dear B.A. Slaff...See you in Sept. All is terrif!-I miss telling you about it. Maurice Sendak." Float-mounted and in frame, 16 x 12 1/2 in. (406 x 317 mm).

A fascinating and highly intimate illustrated letter from 25-year old Maurice Sendak to his psychiatrist and friend, Bertram Slaff (1922-2013), and comprising various vignettes set in Rome and drawn while Sendak was travelling through Italy in 1953. Mixing fantasy and allegory through references to classical art and Roman scenery, these playful sketches narrate Sendak's inner grappling with his own conflicted sexuality and desires as gay and closeted. Marked by a heightened sense of fluidity--between object and person, child and adult, and human and animal, these highly personal, dreamlike, and confessional sketches depict Sendak's interrogation with his own identity through the professional help of Slaff.

Sendak started treatment with Slaff in the early 1950s, when, as literary scholar Golan Y. Moskowitz writes, Sendak was, "Continuously battling difficult feelings..." In 1952 Sendak moved to an apartment on East Fifty-Fourth Street between Madison and Park avenues in Manhattan, only a few blocks away from the apartment of Slaff and his partner--and later long-time friend of Sendak's--the novelist Coleman Dowell (1925-85). It was likely during this time that Sendak met Slaff through their mutual circle of friends. Moskowitz writes that, "the artist [Sendak] soon began long-term psychotherapy. As he put it, he 'keeled over. I just really ran out of steam and I was too frightened. I just lost it. And a very good friend of mine then paid for my first session [of therapy]. He said "You have to help yourself." And I went and I stayed for 10 years.' Speaking of his therapist, Bertram Slaff, who was also gay and Jewish, Sendak would later admit, 'I wanted him to hammer me straight, but of course that failed.' But the artist would later praise Slaff, telling Rolling Stone, 'a large part of my 20s was spent on the analyst's couch [see lot for an illustrated caricature of this]. And it enriched and deepened me and gave me confidence to express much that I might not have without it."' (p. 99, Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context, 2020)

Bertram Slaff was a co-founder of the New York Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, president of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, and held leadership positions in the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists. He started private practice in 1949--not long before he started sessions with Sendak--during which time he was an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Child-Adolescent Division of the Mt. Sinai Department of Psychiatry. While Slaff and Sendak's relationship began on the analyst's couch, it soon blossomed into a long friendship that included Slaff's partner, the novelist Coleman Dowell. Sendak's sessions with Slaff lasted for ten years and were influential for Sendak's work (Kenny's Window [1956], the first book both written and illustrated by Sendak is dedicated to Slaff).

An important glimpse into Sendak's inner life during a critical juncture in his life and career, offered here for the first time ever.