Portrait of George C. Marshall by Thomas Edgar Stephens

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG Director Martin Sullivan discussed this portrait of George C. Marshall by artist Thomas Edgar Stephens. You can see this portrait in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” exhibition on the third floor.

George C. Marshall was, according to one expert observer, the “perfect” soldier. Endowed with a quick mind, a good memory, and a superb sense of strategy, he did not particularly relish war. Yet as chief of staff during World War II, he proved to be a masterful orchestrator of military mobilization. In 1945 President Harry Truman remarked that millions of Americans had served the country well in that conflict, but it had been Marshall who “gave it victory.”

As capable in peace as in wartime, Marshall later became Truman's secretary of state, and it was he who unveiled in 1947 the American aid program for rebuilding Europe’s war-ravaged economies. Ultimately named the Marshall Plan, this venture became one of the greatest triumphs in the entire history of American diplomacy.

Listen to Martin Sullivan’s Face-to-Face talk on George C. Marshall (34:41)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, November 20, when Francis Flavin speaks about Henry Inman’s portrait of Sequoyah. 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.

George Catlett Marshall/Thomas Edgar Stephens, c 1949/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, 1951