Speaking Likeness

An obscure Congressional agency is the House Committee on the Library, which is responsible for the maintenance of the Library of Congress, the erection of monuments to famed individuals. Impatiently last week Illinois' Representative Kent Ellsworth Keller as Library Committee Chairman was waiting for Congress to reassemble so that he might clear his office of encumbrances and settle a vexing artistic problem.

For many years the House has been in the habit of voting from $1,000 to $2,500 for memorial portraits of its Speakers to hang on the crowded walls of the lobby just outside the Chamber. (Before that, deceased Speakers got their photographs stuck up in the Speaker's room.) First oil to make the lobby was a portrait of Henry Clay by Giuseppe Fagnani. Of the 45 Speakers that the House has had, 39, in heavy ormolu frames, are there now. Of these only three are out of the ordinary: 1) the first Speaker of the House, bewigged, pompous Frederick Muhlenberg, copied by Samuel B. Waugh from an earlier portrait by Joseph Wright; 2) Champ Clark, best-known Speaker, by Boris Gordon; 3) Thomas B. Reed, which happened to be painted by John Singer Sargent. By custom, the family of the Speaker may suggest artists for the portrait but the Library Committee makes the final choice.

Snowy-thatched Speaker Henry T. Rainey died last year (TIME, Aug. 27, 1934). Last week's difficulties were due entirely to Widow Rainey's desire not to hurt anybody's feelings. One artist after another begged her permission to paint the official portrait. Kindhearted, she told each & every applicant to go ahead. Result: pictures of Speaker Rainey flooded the office of Chairman Keller until by last week there were ten in all. Nine of them, bearing a marked resemblance not only to the late Speaker but to each other, lined the Committee's office wall (see cut). The tenth, a distressingly primitive study by a friend of the Raineys, was hastily hidden in the cellar.

First across the line was a portrait by Hans Schlereth of Washington, D.C. Largest portrait was a slick study by Howard Chandler Christy. Most insistent was Artist Boris Gordon who yowled that the commission be awarded to his picture without further ado largely because he produced the official Speaker's portrait of Champ Clark. Other portraits were by Paul Trebilcock, Students E. Egley and Ruth Van Sant of Washington's Corcoran Gallery, Student Lloyd Embry of the Yale School of Fine Arts, Nicholas Richard Brewer of St. Paul, Edwin B. Child of Dorset, Vt.

Waiting for his fellow committeemen to set aside a Rainey day, Chairman Keller last week showed newshawks the collection. Said he:

"We are going to select a picture that will show us the Speaker the way he looked in his prime. I remember him at that Peoria Conference some years ago and my, my, what a splendid figure of a man! I am encouraged in my lowly artistic conceptions, for a prominent artist told me only the other day that that is what art, real art, does--it shows a man in his prime. The lucky contestant will receive $2.500 and the others will have had the exnerience."

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