National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Tony Bennett Portrait of Duke Ellington Dedicated, Displayed

In honor of the 110th birthday of Duke Ellington, the National Portrait Gallery today unveiled a portrait of the composer by his friend and fellow musician Tony Bennett. Bennett spoke briefly at the NPG’s McEvoy auditorium this morning, discussing art, music, and his friendship with Ellington. The Duke Ellington School of Performing Arts Jazz Ensemble accompanied the ceremony with a brief set, and they were acknowledged by both NPG Director Martin Sullivan and Bennett. Bennett’s watercolor of Ellington was then removed from the auditorium and taken to the NPG “New Arrivals” gallery, on the first floor, where it will be on public display through Labor Day.

“We are honored to accept this donation from Mr. Bennett to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection,” said Sullivan. “There was great affection between Bennett and Ellington, and both were outstanding contributors to America’s musical heritage.” 

The painting depicts Ellington with a bouquet of pink roses in the background. Bennett chose this motif to celebrate Ellington’s habit of sending the singer a dozen pink roses whenever Ellington composed a new song. In the first rank of American composers, Duke Ellington was “beyond category”: his more than 2,000 jazz compositions include “Satin Doll” and “Sophisticated Lady,” as well as Black, Brown and Beige and the later “Sacred Concerts.” Legendary performer Tony Bennett (born Anthony Benedetto), who has had a lifelong interest in painting, here portrays the man he celebrated as his mentor. “When I worked on his portrait, I was inspired by the look of divine serenity on his face,” Bennett noted, and he inscribed the painting, “God Is Love.” 

Bennett, a fifteen-time Grammy Award–winning singer, has a reputation as an accomplished visual artist. This donation marks the third painting he has donated to the Smithsonian. In 2006, Bennett’s painting of Central Park was donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and in 2002 his portrait of Ella Fitzgerald was donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. 

In a letter to NPG Historian Amy Henderson, Mercedes Ellington stated, “Particularly heartwarming for me . . . is the superb tribute that you have succeeded in creating on this date for both my grandfather and for a special friend, Tony Bennett. Tony has been a dear and close friend of ours, not only during my grandfather’s lifetime, but ever since. A consummate artist, he is one of the few whom Duke Ellington regarded as ‘beyond category.’ Words fail to express how delighted we are that the friendship and mutual admiration between Duke Ellington and Tony Bennett should be enshrined and remembered by the installation of Tony’s portrait of the The Duke in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.”

Listen to the donation ceremony, featuring comments from Tony Bennett (18:02)

Duke Ellington, Tony Bennett, 1993 / Watercolor and graphite on paper / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Tony Bennett

In the Gallery: Photographer Alec Soth

Adroitly navigating the disciplines of editorial photography and fine-art work, Alec Soth has emerged as a leading American artist. He is a member of the famed Magnum Photos group, and has shown his work in galleries and museums in the United States and in Europe.

Born and based in Minneapolis and educated in New York, Soth first attracted critical notice with his series Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004). Since then, he has published NIAGARA (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), and Dog Days, Bogotá (2007). Unlike many contemporary photographers, Soth works with a large-format 8 x 10-inch camera, which, given the time involved in setting up for a photograph, creates an intense relationship between the artist and subject. Soth sees this as the crux of his work.

A selection of Alec Soth’s photographs are on display at the National Portrait Gallery as part of “Portraiture Now: Feature Photography.” This exhibition highlights six photographers who, by working on assignment for publications such as the New Yorker, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine, bring their distinctive “take” on contemporary portraiture to a broad audience. The exhibition closes on September 27, 2009.

For “Portraiture Now: Feature Photography” we chose a selection of Soth’s portraits of women, drawn from past editorial work and fine arts projects, including three portraits from Fashion Magazine, which explored the world of Paris couture and countered those images with subjects from his Minnesota home. As Soth notes, “I’m trying to come to terms with how I honestly see and depict women. Are my pictures romanticized? Sexualized? Why do I see women in this way? For me, photography is as much about the way I respond to the subject as it is about the subject itself.”

Soth recently spoke at the National Portrait Gallery, where he discussed his work in “Portraiture Now: Feature Photography.”

Listen to Alec Soth's gallery talk (38:37)

See other photographers featured in “Portraiture Now: Feature Photography.” On Saturday, May 2, at 1:00 p.m., Steve Pyke will visit the Portrait Gallery and discuss his work. Pyke first won notice for his distinctive close-up style in the 1980s with editorial work for magazines such as Britain’s “style bible,” The Face. And on Saturday, July 11, at 1:30 p.m., attend a talk by a Martin Schoeller, whose photographs have appeared in many different magazines, including New Yorker, Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ), Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone.

Kristin, St. Paul, Minnesota / Alec Soth / Chromogenic print, 2007 / Published in Fashion Magazine (2007) / Collection of the artist, courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York City / © Alec Soth

Portrait of Mark Twain by John White Alexander

Using the pen name Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens had become one of this country's favorite satiric writers by the early 1870s, routinely making light of everyday human foibles. But it was the publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) that assured him a lasting place in American letters.

Inspired in part by Clemens’s own boyhood, these two tales set along the Mississippi River did more than capture the rhythms of youth in antebellum America. In both novels, Clemens examined with sardonic wit various tensions that underlay contemporary society, including, most importantly, the question of race. In later years, his success in this country and abroad was tempered by financial and personal setbacks and by a contempt for American and British imperialism.

This portrait of Mark Twain by John White Alexander is on view in the “American Origins” exhibition at National Portrait Gallery, on the museum's first floor. Professor Ben Click of St. Mary's College of Maryland recently discussed the painting at a Face-to-Face portrait talk.

Listen to Ben Click's Face-to-Face talk on Mark Twain (32:52)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, April 23, when Sid Hart, senior historian, speaks about Ronald Reagan. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens / John White Alexander, 1912 or 1913 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait Survey: Tales from the Road

This is part two of a multi-part series on the CAP, or the Catalog of American Portraits (part 1 is available here). The CAP is a division of the National Portrait Gallery's Center for Electronic Research and Outreach Services. This blog article is by Sue Foster-Garton, currently a database administrator in CEROS but previously a field surveyor for the CAP.

I traveled to Missouri and Arkansas and then all around the West and Pacific Northwest, to Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. I also surveyed many collections in DC, NYC, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. I have 2,657 digital images from these trips, most of which I took myself—at first in black and white (now scanned) and later by digital camera. Some images are not yet digitized, and I also catalogued tons more portraits for which I was not able to get images at all. I guess that I catalogued well over 3,000 portraits in all.

My cataloguing experiences ranged from walking the galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago; to going through stacks of portraits stored everywhere—including the restroom—at the Koshare Indian Museum in La Junta, Colorado; to sitting in portrait-filled living rooms of private collectors in and around DC. I saw every type of portrait from Fekes and Copleys in museums and historic houses to portraits by commissioned artists in state capitol buildings. The Rough Rider Hall of Fame in the North Dakota State Capitol was unusually entertaining as state capitols go: it is filled with colorful portraits of famous North Dakota figures, including Lawrence Welk, Roger Maris, and Angie Dickinson.

I traveled to big cities and small towns. My accommodations ranged from a private club—where a newspaper was delivered to my door in the morning—to a run-down motel with cinder-block walls and a drunken desk attendant. My nicest overall visit was to Kansas, where I loved the fields of sunflowers and afternoon thunderstorms. My most unfortunate trip was to Nebraska, where I hit a December blizzard and had to share the icy highway with huge trucks going 70+ mph . . . and also broke my thumb in a hotel gym using the weight-lifting machines.

One fun experience was in Arkansas. I was able to visit the governor’s mansion in Little Rock just after the Clintons had left for the White House in 1993. I was told that Boots the cat was on the grounds and would join them in DC later. I searched high and low for Boots, hoping to get a picture of him, but never found him. I did, however, get a picture of a large slab of cement, into which a young Chelsea had inscribed “I love you Daddy” before the cement dried. Apparently this artwork hadn’t made the cut on what went to DC. I have a black & white print of this at home but don’t seem to have scanned it—bummer.

Most of my trips to faraway states were two-week adventures where I covered many miles and lived out of a rental car, feeling almost sad when I had to return it. People were very kind to me on the road. I was invited to a pot-luck dinner party for museum staff in Helena, Montana, as well as dinners in the homes of many other charitable souls that I worked with.

I was interviewed for a local public radio station in one of those western states but never heard the piece air, as I left town that day. Several museums featured articles on my project in their newsletters. When I was doing my cataloguing and photography in public spaces, I was stopped constantly by curious folks who were always impressed that I worked for the Smithsonian.

Lecture on Lincoln by Author Harold Holzer, this Saturday, April 18

As the nation celebrates the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, leading Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer delves into one of the most unusual and deeply revealing portraits of the sixteenth president. Holzer will speak at the museum on Saturday, April 18, as part of the American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series, made possible though a pioneering partnership among Washington College, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Holzer’s talk will explore this 1860 portrait of Abraham Lincoln by John Henry Brown.

Holzer is author or editor of thirty-one books on Lincoln and the Civil War era. He has received numerous awards, including the 2005 Lincoln Prize, the most prestigious award in the field, for his book Lincoln at Cooper Union (2004), and he was a 2008 recipient of the National Humanities Medal. His latest work is the critically praised Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Writer, 1860–1861 (2008). Currently, Holzer is senior vice president of external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and co-chairman of the United States Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

John Brown’s portrait of Lincoln is on display in “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln.” This exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery shows the changing face that Abraham Lincoln presented to the world as he led the fight for the Union. The exhibition runs until July 5, 2009. It is part of a yearlong Smithsonian-wide celebration of the bicentennial, exploring the life and times of the nation’s most mythic and transformative president.

The lecture takes place in the museums’ Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium and begins at 4:30 p.m., with doors opening at 4:00 p.m. It is free and open to the public; tickets will be released at 3:30 p.m. at the G Street lobby information desk on a first-come, first-served basis. Limit of two tickets per person. More information is available here.

The American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series will conclude on Sunday, April 26, with a talk by internationally recognized New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. She will explore Charles Addams’s famous cartoon Boiling Oil (1946). More information on the series is available on the website of the C. V. Starr Center.

Abraham Lincoln / John Henry Brown, 1860  / Watercolor on ivory / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait of Samuel Morse

When a scarcity of commissions led Samuel Morse to reconsider his career as an artist, he turned from painting to pursue his earlier interest in inventing. In 1832, he conceived a plan for an electromagnetic recording telegraph and dedicated his energies to developing a working model for his invention.

When Morse applied for a patent in 1840, he had succeeded in devising a relay system for transmitting messages over long distances and had created the practical transmission code that bears his name.

For a time, lack of capital imperiled the future of his telegraph, but in 1843 Congress funded the construction of an experimental line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. One year later, Morse ushered in a new age in communications when he tapped out the first message, "What hath God wrought!"

This button-sized piece of daguerreian jewelry, featuring a portrait of Samuel Morse, was created around 1845 by artist Jonas M. Edwards. The piece is on display at the National Portrait Gallery, in the exhibition "Tokens of Affection and Regard: Photographic Jewelry and Its Makers" on the first floor. The exhibition, drawn primarily from the collection of Larry J. West, features rare and exquisite jewelry containing portraits in the 19th century's four main photographic processes—daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and paper prints.  Ann Shumard, curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed the piece at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. 

Listen to Ann Shumard's Face-to-Face talk on Samuel Morse (31:06)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, April 16, when Professor Ben Click, of St. Mary's College of Maryland, speaks about Mark Twain. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Samuel F. B. Morse / Jonas M. Edwards, c. 1845 / Daguerreotype / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial, 70th Anniversary

On Easter Sunday seventy years ago, Marian Anderson’s powerful and symphonic voice soared at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

One of the outstanding voices of the twentieth century, contralto Marian Anderson—like many African American artists of the time—first achieved success in Europe before winning renown at home. Impresario Sol Hurok convinced her to return to America, and her triumphant 1935 Town Hall concert in New York secured her reputation as one of the great singers of the day.

In 1939 Anderson was embroiled in a historic racial event when the Daughters of the American Revolution banned her appearance at its Constitution Hall. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt intervened and facilitated Anderson’s outdoor concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, at the Lincoln Memorial—an event witnessed by 75,000 listeners and broadcast to a radio audience of millions. Wrote the Washington Post,

It was one of the largest assemblages Washington had seen since Lindbergh came back from Paris in ’27, a gaily-dressed Easter throng that stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument Hill, and sent its northern flank as far as Constitution Avenue.

For all its size, it managed a profound hush as Miss Anderson took her place on the green-carpeted platform and prepared to sing. Her opening song was “America,” and the first notes, gloriously vibrant, confirmed Arturo Toscanini’s toast that this was a voice “heard only once in a hundred years.”

A love aria from the Italian opera, “La Favorite,” followed, and then came Schubert’s lovely “Ave Maria.” She sang with her eyes closed, effortlessly and without gestures, as enchantment settled on the notables up front and on the multitude out beyond.

It was not until 1955 that Anderson was invited to appear at the Metropolitan Opera (in Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera), becoming the first African American to sing an important role as a regular member of the Met company. In 1978 she received a Kennedy Center Honors award.

This portrait of Marian Anderson by Betsy Graves Reyneau was painted in 1955. It is on display at the National Portrait Gallery, in the “Bravo!” exhibition on the third-floor mezzanine.

This Sunday, April 12, Anderson’s historic concert will be celebrated at the Lincoln Memorial. The Marian Anderson Tribute Concert will feature world renowned mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, the women’s a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Chicago Children’s Choir, and the U.S. Marine Band. More information is available here.

Marian Anderson / Betsy Graves Reyneau, 1955 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Harmon Foundation

The Catalog of American Portraits

This is part one of a multi-part series on the Catalog of American Portraits (CAP), a division of the National Portrait Gallery’s Center for Electronic Research and Outreach Services.

Part I: The Catalog of American Portraits: What is it and where can I buy one?

This question comes down the pike many times a year. The Catalog of American Portraits is not a book; it is a room with 200,000 files, each containing information on a specific portrait or a specific artist. The CAP is much like a library, and it is accessible both physically and online. Several individuals have held the title of keeper of the Catalog of American Portraits; the current keeper is Linda Thrift, who has been in charge of the CAP since 1989.

The CAP is an excellent example of how the Smithsonian maintains as its mission the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.” It began with a June 24, 1966, mandate from the Committee on Research and Publication, a group formed out of the National Portrait Gallery’s Commission. That mandate read in part:

That the Catalogue of American Portraits is of fundamental importance, should be undertaken at once and developed as rapidly as possible. This union catalogue of likenesses of historically important figures is to be organized alphabetically by their names; to include, insofar as possible, a record of all likenesses of a sitter, regardless of media; and considerations of media should not divide the Catalogue.

In scope, the goal of the creation of the CAP was to build a body of information about portraits of “historically important figures” in collections everywhere, public and private, using a team of researchers who would photograph, measure, and record available information on a portrait-by-portrait basis.

The next installment, part two: What is the process of surveying a portrait?

Linda Thrift, Keeper of the Catalog of American Portraits and Director of the Center for Electronic Research and Outreach Services.

Portrait of Toni Morrison by Robert McCurdy

Toni Morrison has been writing about the experiences of African Americans since her first novel, The Bluest Eye, appeared in 1970. With the publication of each new work, both her fan base and critical acclaim grew, and she won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon (1977) and the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987). In 1993 Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first black woman to become a Nobel laureate.

Robert McCurdy begins his painted portraits with a photograph, asking his sitters to address the unseen viewer directly and to make no gestures. He seeks an image that has no implied past or future but exists in the eternal present. McCurdy's goal is to provide a neutral environment in order to maximize the highly personal nature of the encounter between subject and viewer.

This 2006 portrait of Toni Morrison, by Robert McCurdy, is on view in the “Twentieth Century Americans” exhibition at National Portrait Gallery, on the museum's third floor. Warren Perry, researcher at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed the painting at a Face-to-Face portrait talk.  You can read more about Toni Morrison in this previous blog post. 

Listen to Warren Perry's Face-to-Face talk on Toni Morrison (25:46)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, April 9, when Ann Shumard, curator of photographs, speaks about Samuel F. B. Morse. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Toni Morrison / Robert McCurdy, 2006 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; on loan from Ian and Annette Cumming

Mary Todd Lincoln

“I fell in love with her and . . . I have never fallen out.”

It is difficult to know the character of the Lincolns’ relationship. When Lincoln wed Mary Todd in 1842, he married into a well-established Illinois family.

Mary was strong-willed, capricious, and adamant. When she eventually showed signs of derangement, her instability colored discussions of her earlier years. Both of Lincoln’s secretaries hated her and gained their revenge in their memoirs of the White House years. But from the best evidence, Lincoln was patient with a woman who could be difficult, not least because she suffered terribly at the death of their sons. After Willie died in 1862, she became increasingly fearful and detached, worrying about Lincoln himself, consulting spiritualists, and spending time away from Washington.

This small sketch by Pierre Morand, circa 1864, seems to show her departing on such a trip, and the artist has juxtaposed the figures to suggest a gap or tension between them that will never be fully known.

Erin Carlson Mast, curator at Lincoln’s Cottage, recently spoke about Mary Todd Lincoln at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. The sketch of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln is displayed on the museum’s first floor, in the exhibition “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln.”

Listen to Erin Carlson Mast's Face-to-Face talk on Mary Todd Lincoln (24:48)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, April 2, when researcher Warren Perry speaks about Toni Morrison. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, c. 1864 / Pierre Morand / Ink and opaque white gouache on paper / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution