ALTON TOBEY THE PORTRAITS Almost every artist will admit that the most difficult form of painting is portraiture. A representational painter's proficiency is often judged on the basis of his or her ability to capture not only the likeness, but also the personality of the subject in a portrait. Some of Tobey's portraits in his own personal collection, such as the three shown below, are in the New Rochelle exhibition -- but most are owned by the people who commissioned them, or are on display in museums or in other public places. The far greater number of portraits Tobey executed are in the three dozen murals he created which are spread all over the world.
His mural of 16 Chief Justices, in St. Paul, Minnesota is actually 16 portraits. His mural Roots of Westchester County, in the County Courthouse in White Plains, NY incorporate portraits of important people in the history of Westchester: Andrew O'Rourke, Alfred DelBello, Edward Michaelian, Nelson Rockefeller, Malcom Wilson, Aaron Copeland, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Norman Rockwell and Robert Merrill. In his 1993 The Biography of Thomasville Georgia, Dwight Eisenhower and William McKinley, who were associated with Thomasville are incorporated into the mural. His 1939 The Founding of Hartford Connecticut includes portraits of Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln and many other famous figures from history. His mural commemorating the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, A More Perfect Union, that was commissioned by Chief Justice Warren Berger in 1987 can be seen here, and The Hartford mural in four sections can be seen at The Hartford Public Library website.
"Psychological confrontation is inescapable with Alton Tobey's fragments," wrote Lisa A. Kapp in "Artspeak" (April 16, 1985). It is quite true as these over-size pieces of the faces of the famous hit you with the strength of their captured, magnified essences. One is struck by the intensity of the irony, humor, humanity, intelligence and profundity encountered among these fragments. The black pupil of Picasso's eye, like a black hole of outer space, taking in all that passes its gaze. The brow of Albert Schweitzer furrowed by the concerns of his fellow man. The humorous pun on the thatch of the now Lady Thatcher. The fading Cheshire Cat of a politician whose scripted smiles become his essence. The honesty, solid determination and dependability of Truman conveyed by the famous firmness of his mouth and jaw."
Raymond E. Tubbs, September 1997
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ABOVE LEFT: The famous silhouette artist Ugo Mochi (1889-1977) was a close personal friend of Alton Tobey's and the artist did a number of portraits of him in the course of their association. Mochi also posed for a famous 1971 painting by Tobey of Antonio Stradivari, currently part of he Herbert Goodkind Collection.
ABOVE RIGHT: This painting of the Mobile artist Alexander Calder (1896-1976) shows another fellow visual artist that Tobey portrayed in his lifetime. The artist often used his friends and members of his family to sit for portraits and for the detail in characters in his murals and other works, so that he could study the patterns of light and shadow, folds of fabric and other details. His friend Mochi was a sitter for some of his work on the Calder portrait.
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Conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) was also one of his subjects. Other portraits in the New Rochelle Exhibition are of U.S. presidents: Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Roosevelt and Brothers United, the famous double portrait of John and Robert Kennedy.
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© Alton Tobey, 2003