Frank O. Salisbury RA
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States of America (1882-1945), 1935
Chalk on paper
23 ¼ x 18 ½ ins. (59cm x 47cm)
Signed and inscribed: ‘Theodore Roosevelt/Frank O. Salisbury 1935’
Philip Mould & Co.
To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com When Frank Owen Salisbury (1874-1962) received a letter from the presidential office following the completion of his portrait of Franklin...
To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com
When Frank Owen Salisbury (1874-1962) received a letter from the presidential office following the completion of his portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), it must have been with some trepidation that he opened it. Although when the painting had been unveiled to unanimous acclaim, many in America had been outraged by the fact that a British artist had been chosen for the task. ‘Lie Urges Protest on English Artists’ ran one headline in the New York Times, referencing the dinner held by the President of the National Academy of Design, Jonas Lie (1880-1940), at which he had encouraged those present to protest against ‘English artists taking work from able portrait painters of this country’.[1] Thus, when he read in Roosevelt’s letter, that he and his wife Eleanor had ‘always felt that it was by far the best [portrait] that was ever done of me’, it must have been with a sense of considerable relief not to say elation.[2] In fact, the finished portrait was so successful that Eleanor proudly displayed a photographic reproduction of it in the living room at Val-Kill Cottage (see image below). The framed photograph was later sold through Christie’s (14-15 February 2001, lot 169, $76,375) where it was acquired by the National Park Service and placed back on display at Val-Kill. Another photographic reproduction was given by Roosevelt to his son and hung in his bedroom.
Frank Salisbury was one of the most hotly in demand society portraitists of this period. The son of a plumber and a glazier, he had come from a modest family. His first artistic engagement came in the form of an apprenticeship in his brother’s stained glass company. Draughtsmanship came naturally to the boy, and he was soon encouraged to take up drawing lessons, which eventually enabled him to win a scholarship to the Royal Academy. As a student, he was awarded a number of prizes that enabled him to travel to Italy. Highly skilled in the traditional manner of academic art, Salisbury believed his work could help to serve as an antidote to what he saw as the Modernist ‘cult of ugliness’.[3] Dapper and urbane, Salisbury was highly favoured in royal circles, his works and activities were closely monitored and commented on in the press.
The sittings for Roosevelt’s portrait – for which the present work is a study – took place over the course of a week in January of 1935. They had been fraught with difficulties. ‘It is not easy’, wrote Salisbury in his autobiography, ‘to turn a president’s office into an artist’s studio’.[4] As he began to sketch the present work he found that there were few moments when the President raised his ‘magnificent head’ from the papers of state, and that what progress he did make was constantly interrupted by bustling intrusion of staffers, advisers and other White House officials.[5] Further, his sitter’s mobile features proved challenging to capture. With Mussolini (1883-1945) – whom he had painted the year before – it had been easy, the megalomaniac Duce had had only one expression, explained the artist, whereas Roosevelt had many. ‘Sometimes’, he said, ‘I wait for an hour before I get the exact expression I want’.[6] Slowly but surely, however, the work began to take shape. When Salisbury saw that only one final sitting was needed, he saw that drastic action would need to be taken to ensure Roosevelt’s uninterrupted attention. Salisbury – a staunch Methodist – explained although he only worked on Sundays in national emergencies […] we might consider this a national emergency’ and completed the final sitting at peace at the President’s home following a Sunday lunch, where ‘with all his genius and power he had a simplicity and grace of manner that made me feel instantly at home’.[7]
Over the course of this week, Salisbury acquired a profound admiration for Roosevelt. For all of its stresses, the portrait had been for him an ‘invigorating experience’ that had brought him into contact with a ‘unique figure in America’s history’.[8] He later wrote that ‘never have I had a more delightful sitter in all my thousand portraits’. Salisbury had been deeply impressed with the President’s warm humanity and dedication to the cause – as he put it – of ‘saving freedom for us all’; this in spite of the debilitating paralysis that Roosevelt had experienced since 1921 and had managed to disguise from the public. It was these qualities that helped Roosevelt to lead his country through the Second World War, in spite of the rapid deterioration of his health.
Roosevelt is here shown in the middle of his first term in office, which was followed by a subsequent three consecutive terms – a number that is unlikely ever to be matched by a sitting U.S. President. Since his inauguration in 1933, he had succeeded in transforming the American economy to reverse the crippling effects of the Great Depression and, through the policies of the New Deal, bring years of growth to the American economy. When the following year he came up for re-election, he won by the greatest landslide since the establishment of the two party system in 1850.
The present work represents a rare portrait of a President in the midst of his official duties. We see Roosevelt at work, with the calm intelligence with which he steered the United States through among the gravest crises of the twentieth century clearly legible on his features. The portrait also exemplifies Salisbury’s remarkable artistry. Despite the circumstances in which it was created, Salisbury was able to provide a defining image of the President that differs little from the portrait as executed. Studies for the hands of the sitter on the bottom of the page show the pains that the artist took to capture Roosevelt’s elegant and expressive gestures.
Salisbury’s portrait provided the benchmark for future artists; the last artist to paint Roosevelt, Elizabeth Shoumatoff (1888-1980) – whose work was interrupted by the President’s sudden death – recalled being amazed by how closely his physiognomy and colouring resembled the Salisbury portrait.[9] All who had known Roosevelt felt that it was his best likeness; on request, Salisbury produced a limited number of prints, one of which sat on his wife Eleanor’s (1884-1962) desk. But perhaps the greatest plaudit came from Roosevelt’s mother who, when the portrait was unveiled, hailed it as a ‘wonderful likeness’.[10]
When a committee at the Washington National Portrait Gallery discussed which portrait of Roosevelt should serve as his official portrait, it was unanimously decided that Salisbury’s should be chosen. Flattered, the artist painted a copy. Avoiding suggestions that he should take American citizenship to present the portrait, he instead gave it directly to President Truman (whom he subsequently painted) to donate as his own personal gift. Today, it still hangs in the White House, where it remains the only portrait of a U.S. President by a non-American artist. For a British artist to have created the defining portrait of so great a president is remarkable indeed. As Salisbury said in 1935 in defence against Jonas Lie, ‘art is international’.[11]
1. New York Times, 15th March 1935
2. F. Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant: Revised with additional Material (London, 1953), p. 84
3. F. O. Salisbury, “Letter to the Editor of the Times”, The Times, 11th May 1934
4. Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant, p. 81
5. Ibid., pp. 81-2; Washington Post, 26th January 1935
6. Washington Post, 26th January 1935 .
7. Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant, p. 80
8. Ibid., p. 79
9. New York Herald Tribune, 16th April 1945
10. New York Times, 27th March 1935
11. Ibid.
When Frank Owen Salisbury (1874-1962) received a letter from the presidential office following the completion of his portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), it must have been with some trepidation that he opened it. Although when the painting had been unveiled to unanimous acclaim, many in America had been outraged by the fact that a British artist had been chosen for the task. ‘Lie Urges Protest on English Artists’ ran one headline in the New York Times, referencing the dinner held by the President of the National Academy of Design, Jonas Lie (1880-1940), at which he had encouraged those present to protest against ‘English artists taking work from able portrait painters of this country’.[1] Thus, when he read in Roosevelt’s letter, that he and his wife Eleanor had ‘always felt that it was by far the best [portrait] that was ever done of me’, it must have been with a sense of considerable relief not to say elation.[2] In fact, the finished portrait was so successful that Eleanor proudly displayed a photographic reproduction of it in the living room at Val-Kill Cottage (see image below). The framed photograph was later sold through Christie’s (14-15 February 2001, lot 169, $76,375) where it was acquired by the National Park Service and placed back on display at Val-Kill. Another photographic reproduction was given by Roosevelt to his son and hung in his bedroom.
Frank Salisbury was one of the most hotly in demand society portraitists of this period. The son of a plumber and a glazier, he had come from a modest family. His first artistic engagement came in the form of an apprenticeship in his brother’s stained glass company. Draughtsmanship came naturally to the boy, and he was soon encouraged to take up drawing lessons, which eventually enabled him to win a scholarship to the Royal Academy. As a student, he was awarded a number of prizes that enabled him to travel to Italy. Highly skilled in the traditional manner of academic art, Salisbury believed his work could help to serve as an antidote to what he saw as the Modernist ‘cult of ugliness’.[3] Dapper and urbane, Salisbury was highly favoured in royal circles, his works and activities were closely monitored and commented on in the press.
The sittings for Roosevelt’s portrait – for which the present work is a study – took place over the course of a week in January of 1935. They had been fraught with difficulties. ‘It is not easy’, wrote Salisbury in his autobiography, ‘to turn a president’s office into an artist’s studio’.[4] As he began to sketch the present work he found that there were few moments when the President raised his ‘magnificent head’ from the papers of state, and that what progress he did make was constantly interrupted by bustling intrusion of staffers, advisers and other White House officials.[5] Further, his sitter’s mobile features proved challenging to capture. With Mussolini (1883-1945) – whom he had painted the year before – it had been easy, the megalomaniac Duce had had only one expression, explained the artist, whereas Roosevelt had many. ‘Sometimes’, he said, ‘I wait for an hour before I get the exact expression I want’.[6] Slowly but surely, however, the work began to take shape. When Salisbury saw that only one final sitting was needed, he saw that drastic action would need to be taken to ensure Roosevelt’s uninterrupted attention. Salisbury – a staunch Methodist – explained although he only worked on Sundays in national emergencies […] we might consider this a national emergency’ and completed the final sitting at peace at the President’s home following a Sunday lunch, where ‘with all his genius and power he had a simplicity and grace of manner that made me feel instantly at home’.[7]
Over the course of this week, Salisbury acquired a profound admiration for Roosevelt. For all of its stresses, the portrait had been for him an ‘invigorating experience’ that had brought him into contact with a ‘unique figure in America’s history’.[8] He later wrote that ‘never have I had a more delightful sitter in all my thousand portraits’. Salisbury had been deeply impressed with the President’s warm humanity and dedication to the cause – as he put it – of ‘saving freedom for us all’; this in spite of the debilitating paralysis that Roosevelt had experienced since 1921 and had managed to disguise from the public. It was these qualities that helped Roosevelt to lead his country through the Second World War, in spite of the rapid deterioration of his health.
Roosevelt is here shown in the middle of his first term in office, which was followed by a subsequent three consecutive terms – a number that is unlikely ever to be matched by a sitting U.S. President. Since his inauguration in 1933, he had succeeded in transforming the American economy to reverse the crippling effects of the Great Depression and, through the policies of the New Deal, bring years of growth to the American economy. When the following year he came up for re-election, he won by the greatest landslide since the establishment of the two party system in 1850.
The present work represents a rare portrait of a President in the midst of his official duties. We see Roosevelt at work, with the calm intelligence with which he steered the United States through among the gravest crises of the twentieth century clearly legible on his features. The portrait also exemplifies Salisbury’s remarkable artistry. Despite the circumstances in which it was created, Salisbury was able to provide a defining image of the President that differs little from the portrait as executed. Studies for the hands of the sitter on the bottom of the page show the pains that the artist took to capture Roosevelt’s elegant and expressive gestures.
Salisbury’s portrait provided the benchmark for future artists; the last artist to paint Roosevelt, Elizabeth Shoumatoff (1888-1980) – whose work was interrupted by the President’s sudden death – recalled being amazed by how closely his physiognomy and colouring resembled the Salisbury portrait.[9] All who had known Roosevelt felt that it was his best likeness; on request, Salisbury produced a limited number of prints, one of which sat on his wife Eleanor’s (1884-1962) desk. But perhaps the greatest plaudit came from Roosevelt’s mother who, when the portrait was unveiled, hailed it as a ‘wonderful likeness’.[10]
When a committee at the Washington National Portrait Gallery discussed which portrait of Roosevelt should serve as his official portrait, it was unanimously decided that Salisbury’s should be chosen. Flattered, the artist painted a copy. Avoiding suggestions that he should take American citizenship to present the portrait, he instead gave it directly to President Truman (whom he subsequently painted) to donate as his own personal gift. Today, it still hangs in the White House, where it remains the only portrait of a U.S. President by a non-American artist. For a British artist to have created the defining portrait of so great a president is remarkable indeed. As Salisbury said in 1935 in defence against Jonas Lie, ‘art is international’.[11]
1. New York Times, 15th March 1935
2. F. Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant: Revised with additional Material (London, 1953), p. 84
3. F. O. Salisbury, “Letter to the Editor of the Times”, The Times, 11th May 1934
4. Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant, p. 81
5. Ibid., pp. 81-2; Washington Post, 26th January 1935
6. Washington Post, 26th January 1935 .
7. Salisbury, Portrait and Pageant, p. 80
8. Ibid., p. 79
9. New York Herald Tribune, 16th April 1945
10. New York Times, 27th March 1935
11. Ibid.
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