Artist's Wife

Rob Godfrey, son of a jobber salesman, was too tall and thin to play football in Grand Rapids (Mich.) High School. He decided he wanted to be a painter. He studied drawing in Grand Rapids Junior College, went to Chicago in 1930 to take commercial art at the American Academy. Year later he was back in Grand Rapids living on his family. The Grand Rapids Art Gallery hung a couple of his paintings and he sold a few water colors from a concession booth at Chicago's Century of Progress. Finally he realized that the only place for an artist was Manhattan.

Rob Godfrey quit the Art Students' League before the end of his second month. He did not want to be a little imitator. He and his roommate decided that what they needed was a studio on Washington Square. They got it, but that did not seem to make Rob Godfrey an artist either. Later he moved in with some friends. When they needed the spare bed for out-of-town guests he spent the night riding subways. Once he got a portrait commission, but he had no studio to paint in. Nonetheless he and Anneliese Conrad, a pretty little German girl who painted too, decided to get married last September. They got a clean, one-room studio apartment on East 18th Street, sold a little work, saved their empty milk bottles to take back to the delicatessen. Last February Rob Godfrey went on re lief, was put to teaching WPA art classes. Last autumn Rob Godfrey painted a bright portrait of his wife looking attractive and intense in a sport coat and plaid scarf. She thought it was good enough to submit for the National Academy of Design show. He did not. Hadn't they turned down his portrait of her in an evening gown last year? Anneliese God frey kept arguing morning, noon & night. Finally on the last possible day, just to please her, Rob Godfrey submitted his portrait. Out of more than 5,000 entries it was one of 278 pictures accepted by the National Academy.

Rob Godfrey went to see it in March, thought it was the least impressive painting in the show. He was vastly surprised and delighted when the Montclair (N. J.) Art Gallery asked to borrow it. A little later the Montclair people wrote to say that his picture had disappeared from the show. Last week the news came out. Of the Academy's 278 paintings, many of them by famed artists, 25-year-old Rob Godfrey's portrait of Anneliese had been the only one picked for purchase by the great Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Criticized for their penchant for spending vast sums on time-tested Titians and Rembrandts while ignoring living artists, the august Metropolitan's directors have lately begun to take a few chances on moderns. But they do not take very big chances, and last week dazed Rob Godfrey refused to reveal the "very modest sum" the Metropolitan had paid for his portrait. "It might." said sensible Anneliese Godfrey, "cause clients to want to have their portraits done for the same price, or cheaper."

Immensely pleased that her husband was the only WPA artist, and one of the youngest painters of any kind, ever to sell a picture to the Metropolitan,* Anneliese Godfrey kept quiet about her own painting, gave Rob all the credit. "I don't want to talk much about it, to tell you the truth," said she to newshawks who flocked to their walk-up apartment. ''I've read a lot of interviews with wives who gushed and a good deal of it sounded silly. Just say I am very proud and so is my husband."

*But many an artist who has sold work to the Metropolitan is currently on relief, including Raphael Soyer, Donald Freeman, Emil Ganso, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Edward Laning.

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