National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Tommy Lasorda joins the collection of the National Portrait Gallery

Photo by Warren Perry

Today, baseball great Tommy Lasorda became part of the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. The former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers also celebrated his eighty-second birthday at NPG with many other baseball greats and the current commissioner of major league baseball, Bud Selig.

Selig said that Lasorda was the perfect ambassador for baseball. Steve Garvey, one of the greatest first baseman ever to play the game, said of his old boss, Lasorda, “It is truly fitting that baseball’s national treasure is now part of the Smithsonian’s collection of treasures.”

Lasorda led the Dodgers to two world championships in 1981 and 1988. Later he served as manager of the first U.S. baseball team; that same team won a gold medal in Sydney, Australia, in the 2000 summer Olympics.

The new image of Tommy Lasorda was painted by Everett Raymond Kinstler. Kinstler’s work is in many major American collections and he is also represented in the NPG collection with his images of, among others, Katharine Hepburn, Gerald Ford, and Arthur Ashe. Of his portrait of Lasorda, Kinstler commented, “I know Tommy bleeds Dodger blue, and I tried to represent him as such.”

Tommy Lasorda by Everett Raymond Kinstler is now on display in the “New Arrivals” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Thomas Charles Lasorda / Everett Raymond Kinstler / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Happy 220th Birthday to James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper wrote the first great American novel, and then he wrote the second, third, and fourth as well.  Born in New Jersey as James Cooper on this date in 1789, he added Fenimore (his mother’s maiden name) as a middle name years later.  His family moved to Otsego County, New York when he was a child and James’ father founded the community now called Cooperstown, home to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales” are the fictional stories of Natty Bumpoo and the first excursions onto the American frontier.  The character of Bumppo and legends of such real heroes as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett provide the American literary landscape with the great archetypal outdoorsman and adventurer.  Cooper imbued Bumppo with traits like independence and courage, and gave him strong senses of adventure and justice. 

Those traits of the isolated frontiersman—friend of the native American, something of a pariah in his own world—are handed down to our later heroes in the genre of cowboy/western age. James Fenimore Cooper successfully predicted the rush westward and the thin tolerance the adventurer would have for the increase of civilization as well as the thin tolerance civilization would have for the adventurer.  Once the lands between the oceans were conquered, Cooper foresaw, this character’s way of life would be obsolete.

Cooper was also sympathetic to the plight of the native American, stating in his introduction to The Last of the Mohicans (1831), “The Mohicans were the possessors of the country first occupied by the Europeans in this portion of the continent.  They were, consequently, the first dispossessed; and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the inroads of civilization, as the verdure of their native forests falls before the nipping frost, is represented as having already befallen them.  There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that has been made of it.”

James Fenimore Cooper died the day before his sixty-second birthday in 1851; he is buried in Christ Churchyard, Cooperstown, New York. This circa 1827 portrait of Cooper, by Amélie Kautz De Lacepede, is part of the collections at the National Portrait Gallery.

James Fenimore Cooper / Amélie Kautz De Lacepede / Lithograph on paper, c. 1827 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution                      

May Swenson, 1913-1989

Everyone knows cigarettes are evil, but they are still powerful symbols of both sophistication and febrile intelligence. The very fine African-American painter Beauford Delaney (1901-1979), did this pastel drawing of his friend, the poet May Swenson in 1960 back when everyone smoked but the addition of the cigarette enhances the edginess of the portrait. 

Just as Delaney was a realist painter in an age of abstraction, Swenson, not unlike her contemporary Elizabeth Bishop, was interested in conveying depth through an intense evocation of the surface of things.  She wrote that the desired “to get through the curtain of things as they appear, to things as they are, and then into the larger, wilder space of things as they are becoming.”

Her tone could range from the brutal straightforwardness with which she described her mother in the mortuary— “My dumpy little mother on the undertaker’s slab/had a mannequin’s grace”—to the whimsical word play in  “Analysis of Baseball:”  “Bat waits/for ball/to mate./Ball hates/to take bat’s/bait. Ball/flirts, bat’s/late. . .” A westerner, born in Utah to a family that spoke Swedish at home (she has translated Tomas Transtromer), Swenson became especially well known for her landscape poems and love poems in which her lesbianism registers but does not restrict their impact.

May Swenson / Beauford Delaney / Drawing, 1960/Pastel and chalk on paper/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian

David C. Ward is an historian at the National Portrait Gallery and also a poet and critic. His friend and editor Michael Schmidt, who runs Carcanet Press in Manchester (England) is a fan of the NPG’s and very kindly agreed to devote a page of his literary journal PNReview to reproducing a portrait of a poet from the Gallery’s collection, accompanied with a short description. PNReview  is devoted to poetry of the English speaking world and Schmidt is delighted to be able to introduce American poets and their portraits to an English and indeed world-wide audience. The next poet to appear in the series will be Edgar Allen Poe.

 

Visit the PN Review online at: http://www.pnreview.co.uk/

 

 

September 11, 2001

Eight years ago today, America was stunned to see the skyline of Manhattan consumed in fire and smoke. Within hours, thousands of Americans had died not only in the World Trade Center buildings, but also in attacks on the Pentagon and at a crash site in a remote Pennsylvania field. In New York alone, several hundred firemen, police personnel, and Port Authority employees were killed. The terror of that day impacted millions of lives both domestic and overseas.

The ramifications of the attacks continue to define American foreign and domestic policies and extend to this moment in the shaping of our economic and defense strategies. The creation of the largest government agency, the Department of Homeland Security, was a direct result of the September 11th tragedy. Like December 7, 1941, the resonance of September 11, 2001, will be felt for generations, if not centuries.

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But always will our whole Nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.  No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.  I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.  Hostilities exist.  There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.  With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
December 8, 1941            

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Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices: secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge—huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong.     

George W. Bush
September 11, 2001    
   

Franklin Delano Roosevelt / Douglas Granville Chandor / Oil on canvas, 1945 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

George W. Bush / Robert Anderson /Oil on canvas, 2008 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Gift of American Fidelity Foundation, J. Thomas and Stefanie Atherton, William S. and Ann Atherton, Dr. Jon C. and Jane G. Axton, Dr. Lee and Sherry Beasley, Thomas A. Cellucci, A. James Clark, Richard H. Collins, Edward and Kaye Cook, Don and Alice Dahlgren, Mr. and Mrs. James L. Easton, Robert Edmund, Robert and Nancy Payne Ellis, Dr. Tom and Cheryl Hewett, Dr. Dodge and Lori Hill, Pete and Shelley Kourtis, Tom and Judy Love, David L. McCombs, Tom and Brenda McDaniel, Herman and LaDonna Meinders, The Norick Family, Kenneth and Gail Ochs, Robert and Sylvia Slater, Richard L. Thurston, Lew and Myra Ward, Dr. James and Susan Wendelken, Jim and Jill Williams

1968 U.S. Open: Arthur Ashe

Forty years ago, white was the color traditionally associated with top-tier international tennis. In those days it was the regulation color for both tennis balls and tennis attire and, judging from this view, was the clothing color choice for many of the all-white spectators sitting at courtside. This 1968 photograph of Arthur Ashe, by Walter Kelleher, is part of the collections at the National Portrait Gallery. 

The presence of Arthur Ashe (1943–1993), a native of the formerly segregated city of Richmond, Virginia, was extraordinary and timely: he was playing for the title in the 1968 U.S. National Championships at Forest Hills, New York. This first U.S. Open took place during the twilight of a summer of racial discord and inner-city rioting, following the April assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Yet the immensely talented Ashe, with characteristic nonchalance for courtside spectacle, was just going about the business of playing tennis while making sporting news and history.

Ashe’s splendid semifinal match with fellow American Clark Graebner inspired writer John McPhee to pen Levels of the Game (1969), an insightful book in which he intertwined profiles of the two dissimilar contestants with riveting vignettes of their classic tennis match.

In the final, Ashe beat Tom Okker of the Netherlands in five sets and became the first African American to win the men’s title. That year ushered in tennis’s “open” era, in which professionals were allowed to compete for prize money in major tournaments traditionally played only by amateurs.

Still an amateur himself in 1968, Ashe forfeited the winner’s purse of $14,000. His amateur status, however, made him eligible to play in the Davis Cup later that fall, along with Graebner, in which the United States won the coveted title.

Ashe went on to win thirty-three singles and eighteen doubles titles—and twice reached the world’s number-one ranking—before he retired in 1980. In addition to his U.S. championship, Ashe won two more grand slam events—the Australian Open (1970) and Wimbledon (1975).Only the French title eluded him; in the history of the game only five men have ever won all four grand slam titles.

Throughout his career, Ashe was a model of sportsmanship. He pursued tennis as a worthy pastime, always cognizant that his own stature and talent could be a positive influence both on and off the court, especially as a role model for underprivileged youth. To his credit, professional tennis never totally consumed him as it did many of his racquettoting peers.

Ashe was sometimes challenged in ways far greater than the competition he faced across the net. In 1969, he was denied a visa to play in the South African Open because of that country’s apartheid policy. Ashe’s subsequent call for the expulsion of South Africa from the professional tennis circuit won many supporters and helped to call attention to apartheid worldwide.

Ashe continued to be an influential voice for civil rights and social causes throughout his career and into retirement, as well as an occasional television sports commentator and newspaper columnist. A former college tennis champion at UCLA, he seemingly prized his degree in business administration as much as any tennis trophy and always exhorted talented young athletes to pursue a college education first before betting their futures on the alluring but unpredictable world of professional sports.

A family history of heart disease unfortunately did not spare Ashe, who appeared to be in excellent physical condition. But in 1979, still a young man, he suffered a heart attack and underwent major heart surgery, the first of two operations. It is believed that tainted blood from a transfusion at the time of the second surgery, in 1983, infected him with HIV. Ashe died from complications from AIDS at age forty-nine on February 6, 1993.

Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr.  / Walter Kelleher / Gelatin silver print, 1968 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait of Albert Einstein by Max Westfield

The most brilliant scientist of the twentieth century, physicist Albert Einstein inspires comparisons to Isaac Newton. By the time he reached thirty, his theory of relativity and work in quantum mechanics had revolutionized physics and profoundly altered our perception of the world.

Einstein naturally commanded great prestige in the United States when he sought refuge from the Nazi regime of his native Germany in 1933. His words thus carried enormous weight in 1939 when he wrote a letter alerting President Roosevelt that Germany was moving toward the development of nuclear weaponry. Eventually, that warning gave impetus to the Manhattan Project, the top-secret venture that in 1945 produced the world's first atomic bomb.

While sitting for this likeness in 1944, Einstein mused to his portraitist, "After fifty years they will say of me, either he was a great man or a fool!"

David Ward, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed Albert Einstein at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. This 1944 portrait is on view at the National Portrait Gallery, in the exhibition “Twentieth Century Americans” on the museum’s third floor.

Listen to David Ward's Face-to-Face talk on Albert Einstein (32:23)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, September 10, when Liz Rideal of London's National Portrait Gallery speaks about John Singleton Copley's self-portrait.  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.

Albert Einstein / Max Westfield / Oil on canvas, 1944 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the artist

September 1, 1939

Today is the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland by Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Europe. 

Excerpts from the poem “September 1, 1939” by W. H. Auden:

    Portrait of W.H. Auden by Richard Francis Lahey

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

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All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Born in England, poet Wystan Hugh Auden came to the United States in 1939 and seven years later became an American citizen. In 1947 he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Anxiety, a long poem that fellow poet Marianne Moore described as a modern morality play.

Richard Lahey's watercolor was exhibited under the title W. H. Auden Reading Poetry, circa 1955. Principal of the Corcoran School of Art, Lahey was a respected portraitist, watercolorist, and printmaker in a generally traditionalist mode, but here he experimented with a cubist abstraction of form. This painting can be seen at the National Portrait Gallery in the “New Arrivals” gallery on the first floor. 

Despite the distortions, Auden, with his tweedy look and boyish haircut, is still recognizable as the energetic teacher, lecturer, and editor from the American phase of his career. In his later years, he was generally acknowledged to be one of the finest poets in the English language.

Wystan Hugh Auden / Richard Francis Lahey / Watercolor on paper, c. 1955 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution