One of the duties of traveling art shows is to offer great ideas to local audiences, a syndrome noted during the 1970s when a tour of the relics of King Tutankhamun inspired private collections of Tut-related jewelry, cosmetics, bookends, diaries, puzzles, mugs, T-shirts, pillows and death-mask decanters of Pennsylvania sour mash whiskey.
Now, the arrival of works by John Singer Sargent at the Art Institute of Chicago has aroused hopes of a nobler sort among one group in the art community, portrait painters. Their dream is that crowds will move through the five darkened galleries staring up at Sargent`s subjects, haughty and often highly strung faces caught for a moment and living forever, and some will wonder, ”Why not me?”
These days, they point out, for less than the cost of a decent new car, a person can commission a portrait, reach toward such painterly immortality and become perhaps, for museum-goers a century from now, the mysterious ”Madame X of Hyde Park,” the enigmatic ”Monsieur Y of Lake Bluff” or the self-assured ”Mrs. G. of West Rogers Park, seen with children.” The person who can set it up is Kathleen Van Ella of Lake Forest.
Since 1980, Van Ella has been planting such ideas in a landscape traditionally hardscrabble for this sort of thing. It is Portraits/Chicago, a coterie of local painters and one sculptor for whom Van Ella, as agent, works phones, makes sales calls, writes letters and arranges group shows in North Shore restaurants and country clubs and River North and Loop art galleries.
”We carry the banner for an old and honored tradition,” she says, ”but sometimes people say to me, `You`re doing a business that comes out of the 19th Century.` ”
To Van Ella, such efforts, including excursions into a mailing list that runs to 1,000 names of potential clients, are worth it. ”We land one big commission a month and three or four smaller ventures,” she says. ”The Midwest is still conservative on portraits, but it`s starting to move.” On view at the Art Institute until April 19, the Sargent show couldn`t hurt. But Van Ella notes, a portrait is not an option only for the rich and famous.
Fees begin at $800 for pastel or pencil work on paper, ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 for the more traditional oils on canvas, depending on size, figures, pets and ornamentation. Frames are extra. A bust by Margo McMahon runs from $1,100 to $12,000. For clients of Portraits/Chicago, selling points are to be found on the walls of Kathleen Van Ella`s home on a curving Lake Forest street. It is a house of many faces. Her personal favorite: a pastel rendering by Jim Pollard of daughter Aleen, 21, now studying in Arizona. ”I walk through the dining room and there she is,” she says. ”Women act this way about their children`s portraits. They love them for their presence.”
Typically, sitting with clients on a sofa near a fireplace, paging through portfolios, Van Ella works slowly toward agreement. It is subtle work, filled with questions. Who is the subject? What medium will be best? How large a work? Where will it be hung? What price? Who will be the artist?
During a tour of samples, Van Ella is careful not to play favorites. Along with coffee and cookies, she offers a cornucopia of brochures, photographs, clippings, anecdotes, observations and phone numbers. From that, and from interviews with the artists, thumb-nail sketches emerge. Among them: — Robert Dewar Bentley. Grew up in Evanston. Graduated from Yale. Quit job as investment banker 14 years ago to become a full-time artist at age 40. Works seven days a week in a sun-drenched studio on the second floor of Market Square overlooking the Lake Forest railroad station. Fresh style. Gregarious, goes for romantic and casual touches, such as a teenager`s shirt hanging out. Has done Sir Georg Solti and family, U.S. Rep. Daniel Rostenkowski, business leaders Brooks McCormick, Thomas Ayers, W. Clement Stone, Arthur Rubloff, Bernard Mitchell, William Wood Prince, Henry Crown.
— William Chambers. Lives and paints in Arlington Heights. Graduate of American Academy of Art and Northeastern Illinois University. Worked 20 years as an illustrator. Exhibited by the New York Society of Illustrators and Mongerson Gallery. Spontaneous. But can be formal, precise. Did portrait of furniture patriarch John M. Smyth for TV commercial that, through electronic wizardry, ”smiles.” Now working on Northwestern University chancellor Robert Strotz, due next month.
— Grace Cole. Works in a studio on North Clark Street. Cool, composed style. ”I try to get the dignity of the person I`m doing.” Notes that a portrait will last 300 years. Doesn`t intellectualize how she ”sees” a subject. ”It`s my gift. I don`t want to analyze it or I`ll lose it.” Now exhibiting (with Alan Lane Gass) at East West Contemporary Art gallery in River North area. Many portraits done as retirement honors. ”I wish that wasn`t the case. It gives bad vibes to chief executive officers.” Now working on portrait of the Rev. James Montgomery, retiring Episcopal Bishop of Chicago.
— Alan Lane Gass. Graduated with honors from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Designed exhibits and murals for Museum of Science and Industry. Became editorial illustrator for Milwaukee Journal. Now based in Milwaukee. Decorative, contemporary, bright style. Starts with camera session. Wife, a good conversationalist, keeps talk going while Gass snaps 70 or more pictures, looking for characteristics. One recent client: A group of Chicago lawyers who gave a portrait certificate to a partner as birthday present. Recipient so pleased he paid extra and had his wife included.
— Helen March. Arlington Heights. Followed husband in corporate career, raised eight ”gorgeous” children, now paints full-time. First inspirations came from her own children. Initially, the kids liked posing for mom. ”After the third time, they`d see me coming with paint or pencils and they`d run.”
March says she ”loved to portray what I felt about them. Love of life, innocence, the way their eyes lit up, it`s hard to explain. I couldn`t catch it in photography.” A professional portraitist for 10 years, March has sketched 800 people, painted 60 commissions.
— Margo McMahon. Portrait sculptor. Yale fine arts graduate. Lives in Lake Forest, works in a coach-house studio on North Dearborn Street. Works from life. ”The subject is always in front of me. I`m getting to know them.” Has had many North Shore commissions. Notes rising interest in the art form. Now working with journalist Adria Bernardi on a tribute to Italian immigrants of Highwood, an exhibition of portrait busts, photographs and poster-size boards that will open in June, Highwood`s centennial.
— Jim Pollard. Pastel artist. Based in Kenosha. Grew up in artist family. Demonstrates at the Portrait Institute, gathering place for portrait painters in New York. To get a line on a subject, Pollard likes to stay overnight in a home. Watches for distinctive poses and gestures. Makes notes, takes pictures of decor, which usually bristles with clues to personalities of those who live there. Says a successful portrait is ”a likeness of studied casualness.” Has done ambassador Patrick J. Lucey, Bart Starr and Muhammad Ali.
— Gay Riseborough. Lake Bluff. Now rehabbing a building in Evanston into a loft studio, due for completion this in spring. Has done 400 portrait commissions, including four presidents of Monmouth College and a pencil portrait of architect Stanley Tigerman used on the cover of his book
”Versus” (Rizzoli, 1982.) Now has ”more work than I can keep up with,”
including a portrait showing an athletic Lake Forest matron floating in a styrofoam chair in a swimming pool with a Diet Coke.
The first American painters made picture signs for stores and taverns. When business was slack, they did houses, which, after tough New England winters, often needed a fresh coat of paint. Occasionally, in that frugal era, they picked up a portrait commission. Known as ”limners,” these traveling artists produced flat, stylized maps of their subjects, making little attempt to capture their humanity. With 19th century prosperity, portraiture came into vogue. Family likenesses were considered essential parts of the household furniture. Painters turned into head-hunters because there was money to be made, a trade ruined by the invention of the camera.
The great ones, of course, survived, though it was never easy. John Singer Sargent put up with so many complaints from sitters that he once defined a portrait as ”a painting with a little something wrong about the mouth” and refused to paint John D. Rockefeller until he got a guarantee that no alterations would be suggested. Nor are all portraits successful.
”Sometimes, a portrait is a corpse, a painting with a curious absence of life,” says Lake Forest College professor Alex Mitchell, a portraitist himself. ”Great painters give an aura of the person. A magical illumination comes across.”
Unlike photographs, a portrait is time-consuming, high-priced, hand-made and one-of-a-kind. Unlike, say, a fur coat or a car, it cannot be traded in. It seeks to capture a life`s special moment. ”A portrait dignifies a person,” says Kathleen Van Ella. ”There`s tremendous power in a drawing of a person. The soul seems to come out.” One North Shore doctor, for example, wanted a last glimpse of his children`s childhood. Added a Lake Forest mother: ”I want my girls on my living room wall. I want them to remember they are sisters, now, before they go off into other relationships.”
In Winnetka, two children recently had their father done for his 70th birthday. A wife, whose husband had married before, ”damn well wanted hers done” to supplant a portrait of the previous wife. In one home, the children hang in the living room, on either side of a fireplace. Many portraits of young persons are done at ”transition times,” just before the sweet face of childhood evaporates, baby teeth fall out, the blush of childhood leaves or they go away to college.
Working methods vary. Robert Bentley likes to meet, talk, take photos, then bring his subject to his studio for a day to do a head study. He makes notes on mouth and eyes and asks what they do most. For example, Victor Danilov, retiring president of the Museum of Science and Industry, is a writer. Bentley portrayed him with typewriter and books. Kids are no problem, Bentley adds. ”I like my subjects. Sure, they move around. But if they`re difficult, I simply say, `Johnny, next time you pull that cord, I`m going to twist your finger.` ” Gay Riseborough has mothers read or play story records to keep offspring still.
Painters also have ways to ”catch the spirit.” Tough little kids get painted ”looking you right in the eye.” Sly ones ”look across” the field of vision. The nervous are seen in profile. Adds Helen March: ”You want to get something that says, `That`s him.` With children, you need to find the look that brings out their personality. A look in their eyes. A wispy smile. Or `that`s how she holds her hands.` ” The problem is with likeness. It is in reaching behind a pose to capture humanity. As Bentley puts it: ”I want to paint a picture about which, in 200 years, people will say, `I`m not sure who the subject was, but isn`t that one hell of a fine painting?”`
Though Portrait/Chicago`s artists are working, Chicago is not considered a strong portrait center. Unlike the East, where corporations and institutions have long traditions of hanging portraits of their leaders, and the South where ”everyone has their children done, like braces,” Chicago is a ”tough market,” notes Pollard. Nashville, for example, is bustling with clients, many of whom include a favorite horse. In contrast, California, says another portrait artist, has ”almost no market except for the odd looney husband and wife who want a portrait in the nude in a hot tub.”
