John Jacob Niles in Hat and Overcoat

about 1927–1934

Medium

Platinum print

Dimensions

20.2 × 15.4 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-415475

John Jacob (“Jack”) Niles (1892-1980) has been described by scholars and acquaintances as a chameleon. Ten years younger than Doris Ulmann, he was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1892 and grew up on a farm in Jefferson County. His father, a man of many professions, brought folk music of all types into his family's home; Niles began collecting regional ballads as a teenager. By contrast, he also studied music at the Université de Lyon and the Schola Cantorum in Paris, read poetry for Gertrude Stein's salon, prepared for a career in opera at the Cincinnati Conservatory, and was performing in the New York theater when Ulmann met him in 1925. (For more information about their relationship see [87.XM.89.7](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/62291/doris-ulmann-john-jacob-niles-playing-the-dulcimer-new-york-city-american-about-1930/)) From the 1920s on he would publish more than fourteen collections of music and give salon and stage concerts around the world. Niles was a natural entertainer and raconteur who was as comfortable in formal wear at the ballet as in overalls on a Kentucky farm. Ulmann's playful study of him seems an apt expression of his versatile character and of…