Pappy's Picture

In what used to be Manhattan's Union Club, the Grand Central Art Galleries last week held the first one-man show in 15 years of the work of one of the most commercially successful portrait painters in the U. S.--Howard Chandler ("Pappy") Christy. Typical of the critical reaction was the New York Times:

"Although [Christy's] style has altered to some extent, its prevailing emphasis is still upon what we conveniently call attributes of the fashionable school of painting. Times may change but the artists of this persuasion hold fast to the bravura surface fireworks."

Whatever the critics thought made no difference to the general public. It swept into the gallery in droves, gaped at slick prettified likenesses of Will Rogers, William Randolph Hearst, Richard Barthelmess, Eddie Rickenbacker, and James Aloysius Farley, lingered longest over lush, sleek-hipped nudes in the yellow marble lobby. Five years ago Artist Christy got a thousand or so dollars for a portrait. Today he charges his sitters up to $10,000.

Voluble Howard Chandler Christy was born 62 years ago in Morgan County, Ohio, where as a cow-milking moppet he was known as "Smiley." In 1889 he went to New York with $200 in savings, entered the Art Students' League, quickly got himself into the class of the late William Merritt Chase. Chase painted in the bravura style with which Italy's Boldini, and Sweden's Zorn were able to produce first-rate works of art. For nearly 50 years Howard Chandler Christy has used the same flashy style but without the same results.

The happy day soon came when Leslie's Weekly paid him $40 for a pen & ink sketch. Shortly thereafter the U. S. S. Maine went down in Havana harbor and Publisher Hearst's war with Spain was on. At a contracted salary of $200 per week from Leslie's Weekly and Scribner's Magazine, 25-year-old Howard Chandler Christy sailed for Cuba on the same transport with Col. Leonard Wood, Lieut.-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. The 400 drawings he sent back from the front are possibly Christy's best work to date.

Back in New York, the money began to roll in and it has never stopped. Like a factory, Christy turned out magazine covers, illustrations, posters. The Christy Girl began to vie with the Gibson Girl in popularity. Two of his best-known models he married: Mabelle Thompson and the present Mrs. Nancy May Palmer Christy. In 1921 he felt himself sufficiently secure financially to give up illustrating and strike out as a painter of celebrities. Since then he has heard Benito Mussolini play the violin, has dined with Marie of Rumania, has made recognizable likenesses of Crown Prince Umberto of Italy, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Speaker Rainey, Will Hays, Lawrence Tibbett, Amelia Earhart, hundreds of others. Always such organizations as the Red Cross, the Warm Springs Foundation, the Will Rogers Memorial can count on a free Christy poster for their campaigns. They are all practically the same: a slim, toothsome young lady in Greek draperies, arms outstretched, welcoming the world.

Ever since San Juan Hill, all Christy nudes have looked alike, but for the past five years models for these have been the Sisters Ford. Originally from New Jersey, Elise and Doris Ford now live with their mother close to the Christy apartment in the Hotel des Artistes. A heavy stockholder in the building, Artist Christy has designed and decorated the hotel's bar with huge murals and reflecting mirrors so that from any seat a drinker need only raise his eyes from his glass to find the bright smiles, virginal bosoms and shapely torsos of Elise Ford crowding upon him from every side.

Well-brought up young women, Elise and Doris Ford always call their patron "Mr. Christy." But to his other friends and intimates he is always "Pappy."

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