Painting
Elizabeth Shoumatoff had begun working on the portrait of the president around noon on April 12, 1945. Roosevelt was being served lunch when he said "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom. The president's attending cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, diagnosed a massive cerebral hemorrhage (stroke). Roosevelt never regained consciousness and died at 3:35 p.m. that day. Shoumatoff never finished the portrait.
The Unfinished Portrait hangs at Roosevelt's former health and relaxation retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, known as the Little White House.
Later, Shoumatoff decided to finish the portrait in FDR's memory. She painted a new painting based on memory. One difference is that the tie that was red in the original is now blue in the finished painting. All other aspects are completely identical. The finished portrait now resides in the Legacy Exhibit beside the original at the Little White House Historic Site in Warm Springs, Georgia.
Read more about this topic: Unfinished Portrait Of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Famous quotes containing the word painting:
“I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
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—Edward Weston (1886–1958)
“His work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)