Description
Born Cedar Rapids, IowaDon Bachardy drew this portrait from life just weeks before Carl Van Vechten’s death in 1964. Van Vechten, a critic and novelist married to Fania Marinoff, was an important advocate for the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, Van Vechten was a talented portrait photographer who depicted important figures of the early twentieth century, including Don Bachardy when he was only nineteen. Later, Bachardy produced this large pencil drawing of Van Vechten, which is signed and dated by the subject. Bachardy generally started with one eye and scaled the rest of the portrait around it. "To me, every drawing and painting is a combination of two personalities," the artist wrote, "and those two personalities are changing every day, every hour. So my work is really a kind of journal of the people I was with on a particular day."
Image
Pencil And Inkwash On Paper
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Margaret and Bruce Kellner
