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Artist and longtime Smith faculty member Katy Schneider is no stranger to the art of portraiture. Her painting of former Smith President Carol Christ hangs in the Klingenstein Browsing Room in Neilson Library. One of her self-portraits is currently on view at the 澳门葡京博彩软件 艺术博物馆.

Portraits of all sorts are a favorite genre. “Growing up in a small 纽约 City apartment with six siblings, I was surrounded by faces,施耐德说。, a lecturer in art at Smith. “这就是我的风景.”

A recent commission, however, posed an unusual artistic challenge. Last spring, Schneider was selected to paint a portrait of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.-前出版商 《澳门葡京博彩软件》 and a member of the family that is central to the newspaper’s 173-year history.

The work would be done without Sulzberger sitting for the artist. “I had one photo and a paragraph about him to work from,” 施耐德说. “I had to call upon my every skill.”

Raoul Anchondo, a staff editor at the 次 who manages the paper’s art collection, had seen Schneider’s still-life paintings at a gallery exhibit in Hudson, 纽约, and suggested that she put herself forward for the Sulzberger commission.

“Katy stood out as a favorite of everyone,” Anchondo says. “She thinks about art and portraiture in a deep way. We felt she would provide some consistency with the style of our other portraits while infusing this one with new vibrancy and energy.”

Schneider’s painting—the result of more than 200 hours of work—was unveiled April 4 on the 15th floor of the 次 曼哈顿的一幢大楼, where it will be displayed alongside portraits of the paper’s other publishers in an area near a new museum exhibit.

苏兹伯格的儿子A. G. Sulzberger—the current publisher of the 次—says the portrait captures his father’s “willingness to push change, 承担风险, and make tough decisions.”

The unveiling event was fun, 施耐德说: “Everyone was warm and appreciative.” She was happy to hear from friends and relatives who had known Arthur in his early 40s—the age he appears in the portrait.

施耐德说 her late parents would have been thrilled about the commission. “It would have meant the world to them,” she says. “《澳门葡京博彩软件》 held an incredibly central place in my family of nine. 我们有一个家务表, but the one and only paid job was to take 35 cents from my dad to go out and purchase the Sunday 次 在售罄之前.”

So, how did Schneider prepare to paint the portrait? Here are the words she was given, along with the photo:
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., now 71 years old, was the publisher of 《澳门葡京博彩软件》 1992年至2018年. The portrait we seek would show him as a younger man. Among his defining social characteristics are informality, humor, geniality, and youthfulness. As an executive, he was innovative, daring, impatient, and unafraid of taking risks. (In his spare time, he was a rock climber and motorcyclist.)

幸运的是, the photo selected of Sulzberger “had an appealing expression and posture,艺术家说。. “In it, he holds a mock-up version of the paper’s first color weekend section. 考虑到 次—formerly nicknamed the Gray Lady—would begin to feature color photography on the front page for the first time under his tenure, this seemed like a good choice.”

Without being able to set up lighting for the portrait, “I had to find subtler ways to create interesting relationships” in the artwork, 施耐德说. “The expression on his face would need to be very specific. I’d need to invent ways to exaggerate volume.”

在她的澳门葡京博彩软件课上, Schneider frequently talks to her students about the limitations of painting from photos. And yet, with her latest portrait, there was a kind of “aha!” moment when she knew she had succeeded in capturing the subtleties and energy of her subject despite the fact that he wasn’t physically present in the studio.

“Without a model sitting for me, this painting required a tremendous amount of trial and error. I just had to look and paint and look and paint,” 施耐德说. “One day, some minor sloshing of paint brought Arthur to life. It was like Pinocchio suddenly turning from wood to a boy. I don’t know what I did, but it worked.”