DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2020):
Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
Description of Pictures: Recent Acquisitions: Gifts from the Corcoran Gallery of Art
October 9, 2020 – October 24, 2021
This exhibition presents more than 25 gifted works, including portraits of cultural figures Louis Armstrong, Katharine Graham, and Frida Kahlo; presidents James Madison and Zachary Taylor; and the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Joseph Henry
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show?
[Slideshow]
Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
SIPGRE_201015_001.JPG: Recent Acquisitions: Gifts from the Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, one of the first private museums in the United States, was established in Washington, D.C., in 1869 by William Wilson Corcoran. It expanded in 1880 to include the Corcoran College of Art and Design and, for more than a century, remained "dedicated to art and used solely for the purpose of encouraging the American genius."
In 2014, the Corcoran transferred the college to George Washington University and distributed the collection. The National Portrait Gallery received eighty portraits, ranging from images of nineteenth-century American presidents to twentieth-century artists, athletes, and movie stars. This exhibition features a selection of portraits from this generous gift.
William Wilson Corcoran's wide-ranging collection encompassed portraits of historical and contemporary figures. In 1879, the first curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, William MacLeod, noted that Corcoran's purchase of a series of presidential portraits by George Peter Alexander Healy showed "the determination of Mr. Corcoran and the trustees to make national portraiture a strong point in the gallery." Today, Corcoran's legacy continues as thousands of works from the collection are treasured and exhibited by several institutions in the Washington, D.C., area, including other Smithsonian museums, the National Gallery of Art, and the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.
SIPGRE_201015_006.JPG: Recent Acquisitions: Gifts from the Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, one of the first private museums in the United States, was established in Washington, D.C., in 1869 by William Wilson Corcoran. It expanded in 1880 to include the Corcoran College of Art and Design and, for more than a century, remained "dedicated to art and used solely for the purpose of encouraging the American genius."
In 2014, the Corcoran transferred the college to George Washington University and distributed the collection. The National Portrait Gallery received eighty portraits, ranging from images of nineteenth-century American presidents to twentieth-century artists, athletes, and movie stars. This exhibition features a selection of portraits from this generous gift.
William Wilson Corcoran's wide-ranging collection encompassed portraits of historical and contemporary figures. In 1879, the first curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, William MacLeod, noted that Corcoran's purchase of a series of presidential portraits by George Peter Alexander Healy showed "the determination of Mr. Corcoran and the trustees to make national portraiture a strong point in the gallery." Today, Corcoran's legacy continues as thousands of works from the collection are treasured and exhibited by several institutions in the Washington, D.C., area, including other Smithsonian museums, the National Gallery of Art, and the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.
SIPGRE_201015_018.JPG: Orange Disaster (Linda Nochlin)
The trailblazing scholar Linda Nochlin's (1931–2017) landmark essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" (1971) details how longstanding institutional and societal structures made it "impossible for women to achieve artistic excellence, or success, on the same footing as men, no matter what the potency of their so-called talent, or genius." Like a siren call, Nochlin's words rocked the discipline of art history and became a foundation for the developing field of feminist studies. For this portrait, artist Deborah Kass riffed on Warhol's Orange Car Crash (1963) from his Death and Disaster series. Kass wrote, "This would be called Orange Disaster (Linda Nochlin), because what else could you call the woman who changed art history as I and all before me had learned it? … Who, besides Linda Nochlin, struck the first and fiercest blow against the white male canon?"
Deborah Kass, 1997
SIPGRE_201015_025.JPG: David Alfaro Siqueiros 1896–1974
Born Mexico City, Mexico
A key figure in the Mexican mural movement that began in the 1920s, David Alfaro Siqueiros believed in the power of public art to inspire revolutionary change. Witnessing the struggles of Mexican peasant laborers only strengthened his Marxist ideology, and he grew interested in technology's potential to create a better world. Siqueiros, who used modern tools, such as airbrushes, often expressed his views through public murals that reinterpreted Mexican folk imagery in an avant-garde style.
In the 1930s, Siqueiros shifted most of his activities to the United States. He led a team of artists who created politically themed public murals in Los Angeles and taught an "Experimental Workshop" in New York City that is credited with inspiring Jackson Pollock's drip-and-pour painting technique. Siqueiros's political activism and artistic experimentation continued through the Chicano art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Rupert García, who created this bold poster portrait, was a leader of that movement.
Rupert García (born 1941) Screenprint, 1974
Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Museum Purchase, Gift of Richard Rodriguez)
NPG.2019.80
SIPGRE_201015_031.JPG: Homage to Frida Kahlo
Born in Mexico City, Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) drew upon the folk culture of her native country to develop a visionary style of self-portraiture. Merging fantasy with realism, she gave visual form to the suffering she had endured following a traumatic injury and a lifetime of ill health, while also probing the politics of gender, class, and race from her perspective as a committed communist.
Kahlo made several transformative visits to the United States during the 1930s. Her first solo exhibition, held in New York City in 1938, was followed by others in the 1940s. It was not until the late 1970s, however, that she received the critical recognition that launched her current iconic status. Kahlo's champions included the influential Chicano movement artist Rupert García, a founding member of San Francisco's Galería de la Raza. García created this poster, featuring a closely cropped portrait of Kahlo, to advertise the gallery's 1978 exhibition in her honor.
Rupert Garcia, 1978
SIPGRE_201015_042.JPG: Stuart's Red, White, and Blue George Washington
Born Westmoreland, Virginia
For his role in leading the Continental Army to victory during the Revolutionary War, and as the first president of the United States, George Washington is considered both the nation's pater patriae as well as its first celebrity. In the last years of Washington's life, his likeness became synonymous with the country and circulated widely in a variety of media, including paintings, prints, and marble statues. The most enduring portrait of Washington is Gilbert Stuart's unfinished "Athenaeum" portrait, from 1796, which served as the basis for the image engraved on the one-dollar bill.
Stuart's Red, White, and Blue reinterprets the "Athenaeum" portrait with a Pop art twist. Using Andy Warhol's strategy of serial repetition, Sante Graziani appropriates and replicates Washington's portrait multiple times in the colors of the American flag. This humorous gesture recognizes the founding father's image and Stuart's portrait in particular as icons of American popular culture.
Sante Graziani, 1965
SIPGRE_201015_048.JPG: Joseph Henry, 1797-1878
Born Albany, New York
From 1846 until 1878, scientist and educator Joseph Henry served as the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. "The worth and importance of the Institution is not to be estimated by what it accumulates within the walls of its building," Henry wrote, "but by what it sends forth into the world."
Prior to his appointment, Henry was a professor of natural philosophy at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he lectured on physics, mineralogy, geology, astronomy, chemistry, and even architecture. As a scientific researcher, his work on electromagnetism contributed to the evolution of the telegraph, and in 1849, he established a program to analyze meteorological data that would give rise to the National Weather Service. During the Civil War, he advised President Abraham Lincoln on scientific matters while running the Smithsonian. Artist Daniel Huntington based this portrait on sketches made while Henry was lecturing.
Daniel Huntington, 1857
SIPGRE_201015_056.JPG: Jacob Jennings Brown, 1775-1828
Born Bucks County, Pennsylvania
General Jacob Jennings Brown was raised as a Quaker in Pennsylvania and later settled in upstate New York, near the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. A member of the New York state militia at the outset of the War of 1812 (1812–15), he rose to prominence for his leadership at the Battle of Sackets Harbor in May 1813. By early 1814, he had attained the rank of major general in the regular army and later fought valiantly at the Battle of Chippewa.
After the conflict with the British, New York City commissioned a series of seven portraits of American heroes -- including Jacob Brown -- from John Wesley Jarvis, most of them dramatic full-length paintings.
Brown posed for Jarvis in New York City in 1815 and 1816. This portrait, which descended in Brown's family, was likely created for the sitter himself, as it is not as dramatic as the full-length version.
John Wesley Jarvis, c 1815-16
SIPGRE_201015_069.JPG: Zachary Taylor, 1784-1850
Born Orange County, Virginia
In 1848, Zachary Taylor was elected twelfth president of the United States. It was a time of mounting tension between the North and South due to the expansion of slavery into the new western territories. Although Taylor was a slaveholder himself, he opposed the spread of slavery. At the time of his death, just sixteen months into his presidency, he continued to enslave men, women, and children at his plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as at the White House. It is believed he was the last president to do so.
John Vanderlyn, a leading American artist who trained in France and had created portraits of President James Monroe, completed a full-length, seated portrait of the president for the Governor's Room in New York's City Hall. This smaller replica, focusing on Taylor's head and shoulders, was acquired by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1877.
John Vanderlyn, c 1850-52
SIPGRE_201015_076.JPG: Chester A. Arthur, 1829-1886
George Peter Alexander Healy, 1884
SIPGRE_201015_085.JPG: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882
Born Portland, Maine
In the nineteenth century, when poetry was a highly popular literary genre, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow rose to unparalleled fame as the first professional poet in the United States. Longfellow appealed to his readers' patriotic pride by mythologizing episodes from the pre-Revolutionary era of American history. Epic works such as The Song of Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), and Paul Revere's Ride (1861) became instant best-sellers. Decades after their publication, the poems were still memorized and recited by American schoolchildren and adults.
Longfellow's poems gained wider recognition as cultural exports and were translated into eighteen different languages by the turn of the century. The poet received honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge in the late 1860s and is the only non-Britain to be honored in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London. This lithograph, made in England by the French artist Alphonse Legros, attests to Longfellow's status as a venerated international celebrity.
Alphonse Legros, c 1863-82
SIPGRE_201015_094.JPG: Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906
Born Adams, Massachusetts
The iconic feminist activist Susan B. Anthony's commitment to women's rights was sparked in 1852, when she was denied the opportunity to speak at a temperance rally because of her gender. Best known as a staunch advocate for women's suffrage, Anthony also participated in a wide spectrum of social reform movements, including abolition and labor. From 1868 to 1870, she published the Revolution, a weekly newspaper that reported on topics such as sex education, domestic violence, and divorce. Anthony was arrested and fined for attempting to vote in a presidential election in 1872, proclaiming in court that her arrest was a "highhanded outrage upon my citizen's rights."
When Carl Gutherz painted this profile of Anthony in 1895, she was serving as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, an organization dedicated to women's voting rights. Having painted the portrait from a photograph, Gutherz traded it in exchange for lodging at a hotel.
Carl Gutherz, 1895
SIPGRE_201015_103.JPG: William Wilson Corcoran, 1798-1888
Born Washington, D.C.
The banker, philanthropist, and art collector William Wilson Corcoran established deep roots in Washington, D.C. The son of an Irish immigrant who operated a leather business in Georgetown, he attended Georgetown College (now Georgetown University) and later became a clerk at the Georgetown branch of the Bank of Columbia and a manager at the Bank of the United States. In 1840, Corcoran co-founded the private banking firm Corcoran and Riggs with his partner George Washington Riggs. In addition to the bank's success, profits from the sale of U.S. Treasury Mexican War bonds enabled Corcoran to retire in 1854 at the age of fifty-six.
While continuing to pursue investments, he devoted much of his energy to art patronage and philanthropy. Although best remembered for founding the art gallery that bore his name, Corcoran was also a major benefactor of the Oak Hill Cemetery, George Washington University, Mount Vernon, and other area institutions.
H.B. Hall and Sons, c 1882
SIPGRE_201015_109.JPG: Peggy Bacon, 1895=1987
Born Ridgefield, Connecticut
Margaret Frances "Peggy" Bacon began her career as a painter but found early success with her satirical prints and drawings of friends and associates. She published illustrations in magazines such as the Dial and Vanity Fair, while her popular 1934 book, Off with Their Heads, portrayed notable personages of the time with wit and charm. Bacon was also an author, an art educator, and the illustrator of more than sixty books.
Originally titled Portrait of My Wife, this painting by Alexander Brook captures Bacon in a moment of introspection. Brook and Bacon met at the Art Students League and were married from 1920 to 1940. This painting was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the Thirteenth Exhibition of Contemporary American
Oil Paintings in 1932, where its high praise earned it a place in the collection. A decade later, Bacon taught at the School of the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Alexander Brook, c 1932
SIPGRE_201015_117.JPG: Richard Evelyn Byrd, 1888-1957
Richard Evelyn Byrd 1888–1957
Born Winchester, Virginia
Margaret French Cresson, daughter of renowned sculptor Daniel Chester French, completed this bust of naval officer and explorer Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd the same year he received the Medal of Honor from President Calvin Coolidge for his attempted flight across the North Pole. Due to engine trouble, Byrd and his expedition partner may never have reached their destination, although they claimed otherwise. Nevertheless, Byrd later conducted several successful polar expeditions. His historic venture to the South Pole was the subject of an Oscar-winning 1930 documentary.
Margaret French Cresson, 1927
SIPGRE_201015_132.JPG: Katharine Graham, 1917-2001
Born New York City
In 1963, when Katharine Graham succeeded her late husband as president of her family's media company and its flagship newspaper, the Washington Post, she faced innumerable challenges. Women executives were still a rarity in corporate circles, and Graham harbored grave doubts about her ability to captain the Washington Post Company. She would prove more than equal to the task; under her guidance the Post was transformed from a local news source into one of the world's most respected newspapers.
Working closely with executive editor Ben Bradlee (whom she brought on board in 1965), Graham took a bold stand for press freedom in 1971 by publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified account of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The following year, the Post launched the investigative reporting that ultimately exposed the Nixon administration's culpability in the Watergate scandal and earned the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize (1973). Graham later received a Pulitzer for her memoir, Personal History (1998).
Mariana Cook, 1988
SIPGRE_201015_135.JPG: Lily Tomlin, New York City
Detroit native Lily Tomlin (born 1939) skyrocketed to fame through the eccentric roles she played on the popular television program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Her uncanny insights into character led to a movie career, beginning with her Oscar-nominated performance in Robert Altman's Nashville (1975). Additional highlights include 9 to 5 (1980) and All of Me (1984). Tomlin won a Tony Award for her solo performance in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985–86), written by her longtime partner (now wife) Jane Wagner. Today, she stars in the hit series Grace and Frankie alongside Jane Fonda.
Tomlin's ascendant career made her the perfect fit for Vanity Fair's December 1986 "Hall of Fame," in which she appeared in a similar photograph by Annie Leibovitz. Tomlin was selected for the magazine's annual feature because in addition to her triumphs, "she lets everyone in on the jokes."
Annie Leibovitz, 1986
SIPGRE_201015_142.JPG: Louis Armstrong, 1901-1971
Born New Orleans, Louisiana
A trumpet virtuoso and innovative vocalist, jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong helped to transform the genre into an international phenomenon. In his performances of the early 1920s, he displayed the technical prowess and rhythmic ingenuity that proved critical to the development of swing. With his own band -- the Hot Five -- formed in 1925, Armstrong made a series of memorable recordings that secured his reputation as the first great jazz soloist; he was as skilled at improvisational "scat" as he was at melody. Armstrong's career flourished during the swing era. After swing gave way to bebop at the close of the 1940s, he rode the wave of the Dixieland jazz revival.
In 1964, Armstrong's recording of "Hello, Dolly!" dislodged the Beatles from the top slot on the pop charts and earned him a Grammy. When Life magazine saluted the musician in its issue of April 15, 1966, the foldout cover featured a color version of this photograph.
Philippe Halsman, 1966
SIPGRE_201015_149.JPG: Catfish Hunter, Fort Lauderdale Yankee Stadium, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Catfish Hunter, Fort Lauderdale Yankee Stadium, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Able to locate his pitches with pinpoint precision, "Catfish" Hunter (1946–1999) amassed an enviable record during his fifteen-year career in Major League Baseball. Born James Augustus Hunter in Hertford, North Carolina, he was nicknamed "Catfish" as a publicity ploy when he debuted with the Kansas City Athletics in 1965. In ten seasons with the team (three in Missouri and seven in Oakland, California), Hunter pitched the first regular-season perfect game in the American League since 1922; posted a 4-0 record in three consecutive World Series Championships (1972–74); and earned the Cy Young Award (1974).
When a contract dispute opened the door to free agency following the 1974 season, Hunter signed with the Yankees for $3.75 million -- a record-setting amount at the time. He helped lead the ballclub to two World Series Championships (1977; 1978) before retiring in 1979. An eight-time All-Star, Hunter was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987.
Stephen Shore, 1978
SIPGRE_201015_156.JPG: Rosalynn Carter on Air Force 2
The photographer Rosalind Fox Solomon turned her camera on Washington, D.C., between 1977 and 1979. With access to spaces ranging from artist studios to the White House, Solomon made probing portraits, such as this one of First Lady Rosalynn Carter aboard Air Force 2. During her years as first lady, Carter (born in Plains, Georgia, in 1927) expanded the role of the presidential spouse, regularly attending cabinet meetings and representing her husband, Jimmy Carter, in an official capacity at home and abroad.
Carter continues to devote her life to public service. For more than four decades, she has championed the needs of people with mental illness while also advocating on behalf of numerous other causes, including the Equal Rights Amendment, early childhood immunization, the Cambodian refugee crisis, and homelessness. In 1982, she and her husband co-founded the Carter Center to promote peace and human rights worldwide. They jointly received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999.
Rosalind Fox Solomon, 1978
SIPGRE_201015_173.JPG: Gertrude "Gussie" Moran, 1923-2013
Born Santa Monica, California
The winner of the U.S. women's indoor tennis championship in March 1949, Gertrude "Gussie" Moran was soon dubbed "Gorgeous Gussie" by sportswriters, who seemed more eager to extol her good looks than her strong forehand. When Moran entered the All England Championship at Wimbledon that summer, she was the fourth-ranked player in the United States. For her first appearance at the storied English tournament, she commissioned new tennis togs from Ted Tinling, a noted British designer and tennis enthusiast. Tinling's creation was a kneeclearing tennis dress paired with lace-trimmed shorts.
When play began and the courtside crowd caught its first glimpse of lace beneath Moran's flying skirt, there was an uproar. Moran lost in the third round but became front-page news for allegedly violating Wimbledon's decorum. Soon afterward, she left the amateur ranks to join the professional tennis tour.
Using a stroboscopic flash, Harold Edgerton captured the full arc of Moran's powerful serve.
Harold Edgerton, 1949
SIPGRE_201015_181.JPG: Gustave "Gus" Solomons Jr., born 1938
Born Cambridge, Massachusetts
Acclaimed as an innovative dancer, choreographer, critic, and educator, Gustave "Gus " Martinez Solomons Jr. began his formal dance training at the Boston Conservatory of Music while earning a degree in architecture from MIT. Solomons moved to New York City in 1961, where he studied with modern dance pioneer Martha Graham. He performed as a soloist with Graham's troupe (1964–65) and Donald McKayle's ensemble (1961–64) before accepting Merce Cunningham's invitation to join his renowned company.
In 1972, he established the Solomons Company/ Dance where, as artistic director, he created more than 165 original, post-modern works informed by architectural concepts and an analytical perspective. Solomons began publishing dance criticism in 1980, and in 1996, he cofounded PARADIGM, a dance company that celebrates performance by mature dancers. As professor, he conducted master classes at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts (1994–2013).
Solomons's moving arms appear wing-like in Harold Edgerton's multiple-flash photograph.
Harold Edgerton, 1960
SIPGRE_201015_185.JPG: Pete Desjardins, 1907-1985
Born St-Pierre-Jolys, Manitoba, Canada
At the 1928 Summer Olympics held in Amsterdam, the American diver Pete Desjardins (born Ulise Joseph Desjardins) claimed gold medals in both the platform and springboard diving competitions. In the ten-meter springboard event, his forward one-and-a-half gainer (or somersault) dive earned a perfect 10 from the judges. Until the advent of diving phenomenon Greg Louganis in the 1980s, Desjardins was widely regarded as the greatest springboard diver in the history of the sport.
Following the 1928 Olympics, Desjardins was banned from further amateur competition after accepting excessive compensation for an appearance in a swimming exhibition. He turned professional in 1931, toured Europe, and performed at the 1939 New York World's Fair. After returning to south Florida (his home since childhood), Desjardins staged popular water shows in Miami Beach until the mid-1960s.
By shooting at a rate of thirty exposures per second, Harold Edgerton produced this sequential image of Desjardins executing a springboard dive.
Harold Edgerton, 1940
SIPGRE_201015_193.JPG: Bessie Potter Vonnah, 1872-1955
Born St. Louis, Missouri
Raised by a single mother in Chicago, Bessie Potter Vonnoh is known for her sculpted figurines of upperand middle-class women and idealized representations of motherhood. Having trained at the Art Institute of Chicago, she opened her own studio in 1894. One year later, she traveled to London and Paris, where she visited the studio of Auguste Rodin, a pivotal experience for her practice.
In 1899, Vonnoh married American Impressionist painter Robert Vonnoh, whom she had met in Chicago while preparing for the 1893 Columbian Exposition with her former teacher Loredo Taft. Here, Vonnoh's husband depicts her in academic garb, an indication of her high professional standing and the couple's deep mutual respect.
Highlights of Bessie Potter Vonnoh's distinguished career include her first solo exhibition in 1910 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and her election as a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1921.
Robert Vonnoh, 1895
SIPGRE_201015_203.JPG: George Santayana, 1863-1952
Born Madrid, Spain
While teaching at Harvard University from 1889 to 1912, the philosopher, poet, and cultural critic George Santayana influenced a rising generation of American leaders. By the age of forty-eight, however, frustration with the "thistles of trivial and narrow scholarship" prompted Santayana to leave the academy and devote the next four decades to European travel and writing. In numerous books and essays, he delved into aspects of philosophy, history, politics, literature, and religion. Yet he is best remembered for trenchant aphorisms, such as "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Santayana was nearly blind and just six months from death when George Biddle visited him in Rome and made the drawing on which this etching is based. Displeased with the result, Santayana commented, "You have given me an ill-natured and unhappy look. I am neither." Biddle commented wryly in his diary, "Even the greatest philosophers can be vain."
George Biddle, 1952
SIPGRE_201015_211.JPG: Academy Self-Portrait Prentiss Taylor, 1907-1991
Born Washington, D.C.
Prentiss Taylor was one of the most significant twentieth-century practitioners of lithography, a method of producing prints from a drawing made on stone with a greasy crayon. As a teenager, the artist studied composition and drawing at the Corcoran School of Art, and in 1931, he made his first lithographic works while studying at the Art Students League in New York City. He later remarked, "With that first magic feeling of the lithograph crayon working on the fine grain of the stone, I knew that I was at home in lithography."
In 1948, Taylor was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design, and he made this lithograph to satisfy the required submission of a self-portrait. By representing his head from four different perspectives, he conveys his interest in the relationship between art and psychotherapy, the subject of an American Journal of Psychiatry article that he published in 1950.
Self-portrait, 1949
SIPGRE_201015_218.JPG: Jacob Epstein, Sculptor
The dynamic energy and human interest of his hometown, New York City, provided Jacob Epstein (1880–1959) with his earliest artistic inspiration and hinted at the qualities he would later develop as a pioneer of modern sculpture. Epstein began his artistic training as a painter, studying at the Art Students League in New York City in 1900. Vision problems forced him to abandon painting in favor of sculpture, which he pursued in Paris before settling in England in 1905.
Epstein created considerable controversy through his avant-garde approach to portrait sculpture and public monuments. Rejecting the polished, idealized appearance that other artists cultivated in imitation of classical Greek art, he deliberately developed a rugged surface quality and radically simplified forms inspired by African and other non-European art traditions. Epstein's figures often convey frank sexuality that shocked contemporary sensibilities.
In this portrait, Walter Ernest Tittle vividly captured the artist's defiant self-confidence.
Walter Ernest Tittle, c 1932
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (yyyy)) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2023_11_07D2_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2023) (59 photos from 11/07/2023)
2019_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2019) (33 photos from 2019)
2018_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2018) (30 photos from 2018)
2017_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2017) (37 photos from 2017)
2016_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2016) (34 photos from 2016)
2015_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2015) (34 photos from 2015)
2014_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2014) (24 photos from 2014)
2012_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2012) (15 photos from 2012)
2011_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2011) (42 photos from 2011)
2010_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2010) (29 photos from 2010)
2009_DC_SIPG_Recent: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2009) (12 photos from 2009)
2020 photos: Well, that was a year, wasn't it? The COVID-19 pandemic cut off most events here in DC after March 11.
The child president's handling of the pandemic was a series of disastrous missteps and lies, encouraging his minions to not wear masks and dramatically increasing infections and deaths here.The BLM protests started in June, made all the worse by the child president's inability to have any empathy for anyone other than himself. Then of course he tried to steal the election in November. What a year!
Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
The farthest distance I traveled after that was about 40 miles. I only visited sites in four states -- Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and DC. That was the least amount of travel I had done since 1995.
Number of photos taken this year: about 246,000, the fewest number of photos I had taken in any year since 2007.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link:
[Thumbnails Only]