Justine     Work     Press     About



Ada Bricktop Smith

Purchase this original watercolor painting and all proceeds go to the Library at the A.J. Williams-Myers African Roots Center—promoting literacy through teaching and learning about the African roots experience, including history and culture, through a dynamic exchange of information, ideas, and creativity.

Original 11x17” watercolor portrait of Ada Bricktop Smith as featured in The Art of the Affair: An Illustrated History of Love, Sex, and Artistic Influence. Framed as shown in alternate images. Comes with a copy of the book signed by the illustrator.



︎︎︎ Next
︎︎︎ Previous
As she appears in the text:

“Ada 'Bricktop’ Smith met Langston Hughes in Paris in 1924, at the first nightclub where she ever performed. He was working there as a busboy. Social and magnetic, Ada soon opened her own Chez Bricktop, a favorite spot for Gertude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, where she booked the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Django. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, ‘My greatest claim to fame is that I met Bricktop before Cole Porter.’ Django wrote a song about her called ‘Bricktop.’”

Read more about The Art of the Affair, by Catherine Lacey and Forsyth Harmon. ︎︎︎