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Original painting by celebrated songwriter Irving Berlin, accomplished in oil on a 9.5 x 14 wooden painter's palette, signed in the lower left in black ink, "Irving Berlin, Xmas - 1969," beneath a musical quotation from the closing phrase of his holiday classic 'White Christmas,' 'and may all your Christmases be white.' An evocative winter scene, this mixed-media painting suggests a snowy Christmas night beneath a deep blue moonlit sky, with a stark gray tree rising from the white landscape. A small portrait of Irving Hoffman is affixed at center, peering through the palette's thumb hole. Mounted and framed without glass to an overall size of 16 x 20.5. In fine condition.
Provenance: From the collection of Irving Berlin's best friend, Irving Hoffman, a Hollywood press agent, drama critic, and columnist for the Hollywood Reporter.
Although Irving Berlin is remembered above all as one of America’s defining songwriters, archival evidence reveals a quieter visual-art side to his creativity. In a 1976 letter to playwright and lyricist Leonard Gershe, Berlin joked self-deprecatingly: 'I demonstrate that as a painter—I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.' The Library of Congress’s Irving Berlin Collection further supports this side of his life, noting an 'Original Artwork' series that includes photographed reproductions of original paintings.
The holiday imagery and inscribed musical quotation make this piece especially resonant in light of Berlin’s beloved “White Christmas,” first introduced in the early 1940s and long regarded as one of the most enduring songs in the American popular canon. Its simple dream of an old-fashioned snowy Christmas has remained a seasonal touchstone for generations, lending this intimate painting—created and inscribed by Berlin himself—a poignant connection to the composer’s most cherished holiday work.
