63205: ELAINE DE KOONING Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Start Price USD 3,500.00 Current Price USD 12,000.00 Time Left - Bid Count 21 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Thursday, November 20, 2008 End Time Thursday, November 20, 2008 Location Heritage Auction Galleries See more about '63205: ELAINE DE KOONING Portrait of John F. Kennedy,' Description click for larger image63205: ELAINE DE KOONING Portrait of John F. Kennedy, ELAINE DE KOONING (American, 1919-1989)Portrait of John F. Kennedy, 1963Oil on canvas96 x 48 inches (243.8 x 121.9 cm)Initialed lower right: E de KPROVENANCE:Estate of the artist;Conrad Fried, New York;Private collection, New York.Elaine de Kooning, student and later wife of Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), was an accomplished painter, teacher, and critic in her own right. Although her abstract series and her bull and cave paintings were widely exhibited during her lifetime, portraiture remained a continual source of inspiration. Her sitters were close friends and today serve as a yearbook of the postwar school of poets, artists, musicians, dancers, and composers active in New York during the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike her female predecessors, Elaine preferred to paint men. In open admiration of masculinity, Elaine's sitters included artists Jim Bohery and Aristodimos Kaldis, composer Merce Cunningham, and art dealer Leo Castelli.In late 1962, Elaine spent two weeks in the Winter White House in Palm Beach, Florida, to paint John F. Kennedy. Elaine was the only artist to sketch the president from life. Intending to make a single portrait, Elaine was fascinated by the changeability of Kennedy's features, resulting in hundreds of sketches and some two dozen canvases. When the president was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Elaine was so distraught that she ceased to paint for nearly a year. She even declined an offer to reproduce the portrait she had made of him on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, explaining that she never wanted to profit from that or any other portrait. Today, one of the finished canvases hangs in the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, and another in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. The loose and furious brushstrokes of this portrait of John F. Kennedy are consistent with Abstract Expressionist paintings of the period. Elaine, like her contemporaries Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky, combines figurative and abstract elements within the same composition. Condition Report: Original canvas, three approximately 1/4 inch vertical scratches with minor losses along the center bottom edge, unframed, bright colors and overall good condition, ready to hang.Alternate Artist Spellings: "De Kooning, Elaine", "Elaine de Kooning", "Elaine Fried", "Kooning, Elaine de", "Kooning, Elaine Marie Catherine de", "Miss Elaine Maria Catherine Fried"Shipping: Requires 3rd Party Shipping (view shipping information)Important notice: Heritage usually auctions material at the rate of 100-110 lots per hour. On some occasions eBay Live bid software or the Internet may not be able to keep up with the pace of the auction. We recommend placing a realistic absentee bid now as insurance to avoid disappointment. 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