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:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)