Unfinished Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt - History

History

In 1943, painter Elizabeth Shoumatoff was told by her friend and client Lucy Mercer Rutherford "You should really paint the President. He has such a remarkable face. There is no painting of him that gives his true expression. I think you could do a wonderful portrait, and he would be such an interesting person to paint! Would you do a portrait of him if it was arranged?" Rutherford would go on to make the arrangements, with Shoumatoff agreeing to sit in for two days within 2 weeks time. She said of the agreement: "I was trapped into something I had neither wished for nor planned." She went on to talk about not being able to turn down the honor of being selected for a Presidential commission.

Read more about this topic:  Unfinished Portrait Of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.
    Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)

    The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?
    Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)