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We found a gallery of paintings by Zelda Fitzgerald, noted Jazz Age icon and talented, beautiful wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, on an exquisite "fansite" called The Legend of Zelda. Most of the images are from the 1940s -- expressionistic gouaches, in luminous, theatrical colors. There's also a pencil sketch of Scott from 1934. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (1900-1948) was a celebrity in her day -- flapper, dancer, and published writer. Daughter of a wealthy Alabama judge, she was 19 when she married F. Scott Fitzgerald, a dashing and ambitious 23-year-old with a best-selling first novel. They roared through
the twenties, living high and partying hard. The people they played with and the places they played -- in the States, in Paris, and on the French Riviera -- recall The Great Gatsby and other Fitzgerald novels. Zelda had a baby, studied ballet, and published stories and articles through the 1920s. In 1930 she suffered her first "mental breakdown," and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Zelda was hospitalized again in 1932; later in the year, her semi-autobiographical novel Save Me the Waltz was published. In 1933 and 1934 she exhibited paintings in the Baltimore
Museum of Fine Arts and in a Manhattan gallery. By the late thirties, Fitzgerald was spending most of his time in Hollywood, binge drinking and working as a screenwriter. He died in 1940 of a heart attack, and in 1948 Zelda died tragically in a hospital fire in Asheville, North Carolina. You can find copies of Zelda's paintings in Zelda, An Illustrated Life. Or read more about the Fitzgeralds, their scandalous lives and stormy marriage in this Salon.com review of a new biography titled Sometimes
Madness Is Wisdom.
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