National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Elvis Presley, Born 74 Years Ago Today

Q. What National Park Service memorial is most closely associated with Elvis Presley?
A. The U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

On this day in 1935, Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Many stories about the King of Rock and Roll have taken on monumental and mythical status. Most everyone who has heard of Elvis has also heard the story about the King shooting the television set, the late-night exploits of the Memphis Mafia at Graceland, or Elvis flying from Memphis to Denver to pick up a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. Most everyone also has seen the photos of Elvis and President Nixon, as well; that sequence of images has its own location on the “When Nixon Met Elvis” website by the National Archives.

Elvis was the prototype for ensuing generations of rock stars. His madnesses were many and his desire to apologize was minimal; after all, he was traveling in uncharted waters. Elvis established the pattern, and fast cars, beautiful women, and fistfuls of narcotics would quickly become part of the rock and roll milieu.

Wild behavior aside, one aspect of Elvis’s personality—though out of control at times—continues to endear him to millions worldwide: he was a charitable man. For every story about the King blowing apart a television set, there are dozens of stories of Elvis helping a friend in need or buying a car for a total stranger.

In Fortunate Son: The Life of Elvis Presley, biographer Charles Ponce de Leon writes, “Always one to share his wealth, Elvis . . . became impetuously generous toward his family, friends, and business acquaintances—sometimes even perfect strangers. He bought them custom-made rings, necklaces, bracelets, and pendants. His jewelry purchases became so frequent and extravagant that his favorite Memphis jewelers were happy to fly to Las Vegas or wherever he was to take an order or make a special delivery.”

One of Elvis’s acts of benevolence will continue to benefit millions forever.  In March 1961, Elvis gave a concert in Hawaii for the benefit of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial fund. The association had struggled for years to fund the completion of the memorial at Pearl Harbor, but the end was not in sight. United States Park Service records indicate that Elvis’s charity performance at Bloch Arena in Hawaii yielded almost $55,000 toward funding the monument; the entire memorial cost approximately $516,000, meaning that the concert produced more than 10 percent of the money needed for the project.

Interestingly, without Elvis, there is no way of knowing when the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial would have opened to the public. His 1961 benefit performance was the final fiscal push needed to open the doors to the memorial.

Listen to Warren Perry’s Face-to-Face talk on Elvis Presley (25:28)

The next Face-to-Face talk is tonight (Thursday, January 8), when Anne Goodyear, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, will discuss a portrait of Cindy Sherman by photographer Martin Schoeller. This portrait is on view in the exhibition "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography." 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.

Elvis Aron Presley/Ralph Wolfe Cowan,1976-1988/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of R.W. Cowan   

For more on Elvis, visit the previous blog post "Isaac And Elvis: The Memphis Music Legacy." For further reading see Fortunate Son: The Life of Elvis Presley by Charles Ponce de Leon, the “When Nixon Met Elvis” website by the National Archives, and the National Park Service Arizona Memorial, FAQ's page.

NPG Acquires Shepard Fairey’s Portrait of Barack Obama

The portrait is not yet on display; it will go on view before Inauguration Day.

               ©  Shepard Fairey/ObeyGiant.com

The portrait that came to symbolize the historic campaign of President-elect Barack Obama will make its permanent home only a few blocks from the White House at the National Portrait Gallery. The piece, created by Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey, came to the museum through the generosity of Washington, D.C., art collectors Heather and Tony Podesta, in honor of Tony Podesta’s mother, the late Mary K. Podesta.

“This work is an emblem of a significant election, as well as a new presidency,” said Martin E.Sullivan, director of the National Portrait Gallery. “Shepard Fairey’s instantly recognizable image was integral to the Obama campaign. We are deeply grateful to the Podestas for their generosity.”

Fairey’s large-scale, mixed-media stenciled collage was the central portrait image for the Obama campaign and was previously distributed as a limited-edition print and as a free download. The collage will be on view at the Portrait Gallery by Inauguration Day. It will be installed on the first floor of the museum in the “New Arrivals” exhibition.

Fairey’s work is represented by the Irvine Contemporary gallery in Washington, D.C. Fairey’s works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2006, Gingko Press published a monograph on the artist’s career, “Obey: Supply and Demand.” A retrospective of Fairey’s work will open Feb. 6 at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art.

Barack Obama/Shepard Fairey, 2008 / Hand-finished collage, stencil and acrylic on paper / Gift of the Heather and Tony Podesta Collection in honor of Mary K. Podesta / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution /
© Shepard Fairey/ObeyGiant.com

January 6, 1759: George and Martha Washington Tie the Knot

Two hundred and fifty years ago today, George Washington, a land owner and an officer in the Virginia militia, and Martha Dandridge Custis (right), a widow with two children, were wed at White House, the Custis home in New Kent County, Virginia, that Martha inherited upon the death of her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. It was not a coincidence that the date chosen for the wedding was Epiphany; Twelfth Night was traditionally a night for celebrations, and the Washington-Custis wedding was purposefully tied to this date.

In her biography Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, Helen Bryan writes:

The wedding was probably a very robust affair. Most social occasions in the tidewater were. Martha would have known what to expect and would have made meticulous preparations in advance to feed and accommodate a houseful of guests who would be cooped up together in the house for an indeterminate number of days. Plantation weddings went on for a long time, and once guests had made the trip over bad, frozen, or snow-covered roads or up the icy Pamunkey River to White House, they would have had no inclination to go home quickly. Advance preparations must have involved making up endless sleeping pallets; preparing bedding; stocking up with firewood, extra soap, and candles; and an orgy of roasting, smoking, and baking; not to mention provisioning with cordials, brewing of beer, and ordering plenty of wine, Madeira, port, rum, brandy, and whiskey. Colonials were a notoriously hard-drinking lot. And in keeping with the custom of the time, Martha probably decorated White House with pine boughs, holly, mistletoe, and ivy.

Although George Washington entered the relationship as a property owner and a man of excellent reputation, Martha’s inheritance of property and slaves from Daniel Parke Custis’s estate would have been an attractive corollary to the establishment of this marriage. Washington was ambitious with respect to property, and he had great plans for his holdings at Mount Vernon; marrying a wealthy widow roughly his own age—Martha was born in 1731, some eight months before George’s birthday in 1732—would greatly increase his social and financial positions. As colonial law forbade Martha to own property after marriage, George immediately became responsible for the property Martha shared with her two children, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis. On May 1, 1759, George wrote to Robert Cary and Company, London merchants:

Gentlemen, the enclosed is the minister’s certificate of my marriage with Mrs. Martha Custis, properly as I am told, authenticated. You will therefore for the future please to address all your letters which relate to the affairs of the late Daniel Parke Custis, Esquire, to me, as by marriage I am entitled to a third part of that estate, and invested likewise with the care of the other two thirds by a decree of our general court which I obtained in order to strengthen the power I before had in consequence of my wife’s administration.

George and Martha would share forty years together; however, George spent a substantial portion of that time fighting to build and to administer a new nation. He died in December of 1799, and she passed away in May of 1802. Although plans were conceived within the young government to bury Washington beneath the United States Capitol, George and Martha Washington are fittingly interred together at Mount Vernon.

George Washington and Family/David Edwin, 1798, Copy after: Edward Savage/Stipple engraving on paper/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington/Rembrandt Peale, c. 1853/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of an anonymous donor

George Washington (Lansdowne portrait)/Gilbert Stuart, 1796/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery; acquired as a gift to the nation through the generosity of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation

Portrait of Barack Obama by Martin Schoeller

                      © Martin Schoeller

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a talk about selected portraits on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, Anne Goodyear, who is Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at NPG, discussed this portrait of Barack Obama by photographer Martin Schoeller.  The portrait is on display in the recently opened exhibition "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography."

Martin Schoeller photographed Barack Obama for a December 2004 feature on “Men of the Year,” in Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ), where a variant of this photograph appeared.  Reflecting upon the success of his address at the 2004 Democratic convention, Obama, who would go on to win the presidential election in 2008, observed: “The reason you do this stuff is not to . . . get your face in a magazine . . . You do this stuff because you care about the epic struggle to make America what it can be.”

A native of Germany, Martin Schoeller, who now lives and works in New York, honed his skills by working with Annie Leibovitz.  He has exhibited his portraits internationally and has received numerous awards. Schoeller’s photographs have appeared in many prominent magazines, including the New Yorker, Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ), Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone.

Listen to Anne Goodyear’s Face-to-Face talk on Barack Obama (33:26)

To view more works by Martin Schoeller, and the other artists featured in "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography," be sure to see the online exhibition.  You can learn more about Schoeller’s portrait of Obama in this article from Voice of America. And listen to Martin Schoeller in this audio slideshow from the New Yorker.

The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, January 8, when Anne Goodyear will discuss a portrait of Cindy Sherman, also by Martin Schoeller.  The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m.  January 8 will also feature a special noon-time addition of Face-to-Face, when Warren Perry speaks about the portrait of Elvis Presley by Ralph Cowan.  Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Photograph by Voice of America, taken by David Byrd.

Barack Obama/Martin Schoeller, 2004/Digital C-print/Collection of the artist, courtesy Hasted Hunt, New York City/© Martin Schoeller

Portraits of President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush Unveiled

Photo by Warren Perry

President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush unveiled portraits of themselves commissioned for the National Portrait Gallery in a private ceremony at the museum this morning.  The paintings will be on public view beginning today. This is the first time that the Portrait Gallery will present the official likenesses of a sitting president and first lady.

“It is always a great moment for the National Portrait Gallery to unveil the portraits of presidents and first ladies,” said Martin E. Sullivan, director of the museum. “I am thrilled that the museum is able to install these two works while President Bush is in the White House.”

Robert Anderson was selected by the White House to paint the president’s portrait. Anderson was a classmate of Bush’s at Yale University and received his training in fine arts at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A professional portraitist based in Darien, Conn., Anderson has also painted a portrait of Bush for the Yale Club in New York. Bush’s portrait will be installed in the exhibition “America’s Presidents,” among those of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and George H.W. Bush. 

Aleksander Titovets was selected by the White House to paint Laura Bush’s portrait. Titovets is a native Russian painter who now lives in El Paso, Texas. Trained at the St. Petersburg State University College of Fine Arts, he specializes in figurative and landscape painting inspired by his native Russia as well as the landscape of the Southwest. Initially, the portrait of Laura Bush will be hung on the first floor in the north hall of the National Portrait Gallery.
 

Listen to an interview with Robert Anderson, the artist who painted President Bush's portrait (4:10)

Listen to an interview with Aleksander Titovets, the artist who painted first lady Laura Bush's portrait (6:43) 

Listen to a recording of the event. The speakers are Martin E. Sullivan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery; G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Mrs. Laura Bush; and President George W. Bush. (19:15) 

Video from necn.com

Photos by Warren Perry, John McMahon, and Benjamin Bloom

George W. Bush / Robert Anderson , 2008/Oil on canvas/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

Laura Bush/ Aleksander Titovets, 2008/ Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. O. Stewart

Birthday of Joseph Henry, First Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution

Joseph Henry was born 211 years ago today, on December 17, 1797. 

Joseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was a remarkable man. His interests spanned the scientific and academic world, from anthropology to meteorology, and he believed that the quest for and imparting of knowledge were central to the mission of the Smithsonian.

This photograph of Henry was taken around 1860, by the Mathew Brady Studio and produced as a carte de visite—a sort of trading card and celebrity collectable. It is on display at the National Portrait Gallery, in the American Origins exhibition, on the museum’s first floor.

In Joseph Henry's words:

The worth and importance of the Institution is not to be estimated by what it accumulates within the walls of its building, but by what it sends forth to the world. Its great mission is to facilitate the use of implements of research, and to diffuse the knowledge which this use may develop.

Henry’s work in electromagnetism was part of the collective effort that made the telegraph possible; in Henry’s honor, the scientific community calls the unit of measure of electrical inductance the henry.

In 1879, William B. Taylor wrote the following, which was read into the proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Washington after Henry’s death:

In his own pursuits Truth was the supreme object of his regard—the sole interest and incentive of his investigations; and in its prosecution he brought to bear in equable combination qualities of a high order; quickness and correctness of perception, inventive ingenuity in experimentation, logical precision in deduction, perseverance in exploration, sagacity in interpretation.

Henry was Secretary of the Smithsonian from 1846 until his death in 1878. He was also a professor at the College of New Jersey (Princeton) for sixteen years and served as president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1868 to 1878. Henry is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and a statue bearing his likeness stands in front of the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall in Washington.

For more information on Henry, see the Joseph Henry Paper’s website, created by the Smithsonian Institution Archives. 

Photograph by David Bjorgen, from Wikipedia Commons. Used via Creative Commons. 

This statue of Joseph Henry stands in front of the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall in Washington. 

Joseph Henry/Mathew Brady Studio, c. 1860/Modern albumen print from wet plate collodion negative/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

The Many Faces of Lincoln

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a talk about selected portraits on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG historian David Ward discussed a few photographs of Lincoln on display in the recently opened exhibition “One Life: Mask of Lincoln.” Ward, who curated the exhibition, spoke mainly about the following portraits:

“Tousled Hair” portrait by Alexander Hesler, c. 1857

This thumb-sized copy of Alexander Hesler’s 1857 “tousled hair” portrait of Lincoln was produced in 1860 so that it could be cut out, placed in a frame, and worn as a pin or locket during the campaign.

Such partisan political symbols had long been a staple of American elections, but the heated political climate of 1860—and the need for the Lincoln organization to mobilize all its supporters—led to a plethora of new and creative ways to energize a public immersed in the political culture of the time.

Portrait by Alexander Gardner, 1861

Lincoln was the first president after photography truly came of age. He embraced the new technology, sitting frequently, and he was interested in both technological issues and composition. Perhaps because of his early struggle to make himself into somebody of substance—to make himself visible—Lincoln was acutely aware of the power of image-making.

When he arrived in Washington, Lincoln quickly arranged to have himself photographed at Alexander Gardner’s studio. These photographs were the first widely disseminated pictures of the president with his newly grown beard.

Portrait by Alexander Gardner, November 8, 1863

On November 8, 1863, Lincoln had this portrait taken by Alexander Gardner. While waiting, he read a newspaper account of the speech that famed orator Edward Everett would make at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg. Lincoln would also speak, but had yet to compose his remarks, promisingly only that they would be “short, short, short.”

“Cracked-plate” portrait by Alexander Gardner, 1865

One of the most haunting images in American history and art, this portrait was taken in February 1865. The picture of Lincoln—hollowed, careworn, and yet with a slight smile still after four years of war—is given added poignancy by the crack that appeared in the negative after it was developed.

Listen to David Ward’s Face-to-Face talk on Lincoln (26:18)

For more on Lincoln, be sure to see the online exhibition.  And read more about the exhibition, in this recent article from the New York Times. Also, hear more from David Ward, in this interview about "One Life: The Mask of Lincoln."

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, December 18, when Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings Anne Goodyear speaks about the portrait of President-elect Barack Obama by Martin Schoeller. This portrait is on display in NPG’s new exhibition “Portraiture Now: Feature Photography.” 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 Lincoln/Unidentified artist, after Alexander Hesler,c. 1857 (printed c. 1860)/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, 1861/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, November 8, 1863/Albumen silver print/Collection of Keya Morgan, New York City

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, 1865/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

New Exhibition: Feature Photography

                                 © Jocelyn Lee

The exhibition "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography" recently opened at the National Portrait Gallery.  Come and see this new exhibition of works by six critically acclaimed photographers—Katy Grannan, Jocelyn Lee, Ryan McGinley, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller and Alec Soth. 

Often working on a specific commission or editorial assignment for publications such as the New Yorker, Esquire and the New York Times Magazine, these photographers compose portraits that cause us to pause and reflect.  The exhibition runs through September 27, 2009, and is on view on the museum’s first floor. 

NPG associate curator of photographs, Frank Goodyear, sat down with photographer Jocelyn Lee to discuss her work. Lee’s photographs for this exhibition were drawn from work that she has completed in Maine, a place where she has spent much time. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lee has served as a professor of photography at Princeton University since 2003.

JL: I think if I hadn’t found photography, I think the field I would have gone into would have been psychology.  I studied philosophy for the same reasons that I was studying photography.  It was a way of sort of thinking about basic issues of what it means to be alive.  It sounds pretentious, but that was essentially what drew me to both of those subjects.  Asking basic questions of how we find meaning in our lives. 

The portrait allows me to spend time with one other person, and to have a kind of intimate exchange that the rhythm of the regular world does not allow.  It’s a way to slow things down and really consider what it is to be a human being, living here on this earth, looking the way we do.  Aging, going through all of the life transitions that we go through—from adolescence, puberty, middle age, illness, love, death—all of those things.  It’s a way to study them slowly and collaboratively with other people.

FG: Do you talk with your subjects a lot about what you are striving to achieve in a particular picture?  To what extent do you deliberately kind of pre-visualize what you want to do?  Or is it more intuitive?

JL:  I would say that I do pre-visualize it—somewhat.  But again this goes back to the question about why I love photography.  If it was purely pre-visualized, then I could imagine these being drawings, or paintings, or collage, or something else.  But part of what is so magical to me about the medium of photography, is that I can never ultimately control the subject. And what they bring to the shoot, or the event, or the drama, or the narrative, is ultimately their own mystery.  And that, in the end, is what makes the picture strong. 

Some of my least successful pictures are those that have been so pre-visualized that I’m controlling all aspects of it. And my stronger pictures are the pictures where there’s this collaboration between my initial fantasy, sense of narrative, and the collaboration between the innate mystery of the person who is posing for me.

So when I look at the pictures now, as much as I’ve made them, the strongest pictures I feel are still a gift from the other person.  I still see them as something that, in part, has been given to me by the subject. 

FG: You teach at Princeton University—what are the lessons that you are trying to instill in young photographers?  What kind of advice are you constantly reasserting in their own careers?

JL: I love teaching photography because it’s the coming together of the world, and how the photographer feels about the world.  Very quickly, a student can begin to make meaningful photographs that comment on their perceptions of the world.  It’s very different from drawing, it’s very different from painting, it’s very different from sculpture.  The entry level skill is achieved pretty quickly. 

I think the biggest contribution that I can give to my students is to be honest with yourself, and be sincere.  What do you want to talk about? You’re given this incredible power so quickly. You have a camera, and you’ve got the entire world at your disposal.  What do you want to talk about?  In every gesture with the camera, you’re making a decision: what you point the camera at, how you frame that photograph.  You’re commenting on the world.  You’re editing the world.  And you’re giving it to us as a story.  So I think photography is really a powerful thing for students who have ideas, who are visual, and want to say something. 

Listen to the entire interview with Jocelyn Lee (26:20)

To view more of Jocelyn Lee's work, and photographs by the other artists featured in "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography," be sure to see the online exhibition. 

Untitled (Kara on Easter)/Jocelyn Lee, 1999/Chromogenic print/Collection of the artist/© Jocelyn Lee

Untitled (Inuit woman in hospital, Rankin Island)/Jocelyn Lee, 2002/Chromogenic print/Published in the New York Times Magazine, May 5, 2002/Collection of the artist/© Jocelyn Lee

FDR and the End of Prohibition

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition. As part of the National Portrait Gallery’s regular “Face-to-Face” portrait talks, NPG researcher Warren Perry discussed Roosevelt and his role in turning back Prohibition. This 1945 portrait of FDR, by artist Douglas Granville Chandor, can be viewed in the America’s Presidents exhibition, on the museum’s first floor. 

From Jean Edward Smith’s FDR:

FDR’s attitude toward Prohibition was . . . equivocal.  Never averse to bending an elbow himself, he nevertheless accumulated a perfect voting record in the Senate, according to the Anti-Saloon League.  In January 1913, he actually introduced a local option bill for the League and became the subject of a laudatory editorial (“An Advocate of Christian Patriotism”) in its national magazine. In this instance, Franklin appears to have been too clever by half. Prohibition was anathema in New York City, and his opponents never tired of tying him to it.  Down through 1932 the story persisted that whatever Roosevelt might say, there was a voting record to prove he was “dry” at heart.

By the time of the 1932 election, Prohibition had taken its toll on America. There was huge reluctance on the part of presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt to deny that it had taken money away from federal coffers and placed it into the hands of unsavory characters like Al Capone. As Maureen Ogle records in her barley epic, Ambitious Brew, Roosevelt announced during his campaign that it was “time to correct the ‘stupendous blunder’ that was Prohibition.”

Prohibition was repealed seventy-five years ago today. People went back to work in various brewing and distilling industries, and after work, many of them went home and had a drink.

Listen to Warren Perry’s Face-to-Face talk on Roosevelt and the repeal of prohibition (18:18)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, December 11, when NPG historian David Ward speaks about the portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Hesler. 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.

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

Sources and further reading:

Ogle, Maureen.  Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer.
    New York: Harcourt, 2006.

Smith, Jean Edward.  FDR.  New York: Random House, 2008.

Portrait of Sequoyah by Henry Inman

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. Francis Flavin, historian at the U.S. Department of the Interior, discussed this portrait of Sequoyah by artist Henry Inman. You can see this portrait in the “American Origins” exhibition on the first floor.

Sequoyah, the son of a Cherokee chief's daughter and a fur trader from Virginia, was a warrior and hunter and, some say, a silversmith. For twelve years he worked to devise a method of writing for the Cherokee language. His syllabary of eighty-five symbols, representing vowel and consonant sounds, was approved by the Cherokee chiefs in 1821, and the simple utilitarian system made possible a rapid spread of literacy throughout the Cherokee nation. Medicine men set down ceremonies for healing, divination, war, and traditional ball games; missionaries translated hymns and the New Testament into the native language; and in 1828 the Cherokee Phoenix, a weekly bilingual newspaper, began publication at New Echota, Georgia.

The original portrait of Sequoyah, painted by Charles Bird King, was destroyed by the fire that swept through the Smithsonian Castle building in January 1865.

Listen to Francis Flavin’s Face-to-Face talk on Sequoyah (23:17)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is tonight (Thursday, December 4), when NPG researcher Warren Perry speaks about Franklin D. Roosevelt and the seventy-fifth anniversary of prohibition’s repeal. 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.

Sequoyah/Henry Inman, c. 1830/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution