This nine-foot-tall portrait of popular American newspaper columnist, short-story writer, and novelist Katharine Brush by artist Leon Gordon dominates the second floor of the Katharine Brush Library at the prestigious Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. Brush (born Katharine Louise Ingham) was no ordinary writer nor is this larger-than-life depiction of the slender beauty wearing a dramatic full-length evening gown with plunging neckline and soft draped neck cape on the shoulders. Her short modern dark hair, shiny bracelets and jewelry, and a large red center flower all exude 1930s elegance and fashion. Completed when she was about 31 years old, Brush’s “Old Hollywood” style is timeless and apropos since her best-selling novel Red-Headed Woman was made into a film in 1932 starring Jean Harlow. Brush's works were characterized by her narrative style and wit. She was praised for being a keen observer of contemporary American life as a writer skilled at presenting the foibles of relationships in a realistic manner. Gordon painted Brush’s portrait in 1933 to hang in the two-story, 13-room duplex Manhattan apartment she shared with her second husband Bob Winans. She was the mother of one child, Thomas, with her first husband Thomas Stewart Brush. Brush passed away in 1952 and, in 1968, her son donated the funding — and this painting — for a new library in her memory to the Loomis Chaffee School of Windsor, CT. During his life, Gordon (born in the city of Borisov in the Minsk Region of Belarus) painted many wonderful portraits of the rich and famous like Willa Cather, Dorothy Gish, Will Rogers, President Calvin Coolidge, Benjamin Barr Lindsey, Winston Churchill, John L. Lewis, and Helen Keller. In 1930, Good Housekeeping magazine commissioned Gordon to paint twelve portraits of "the twelve greatest American women" (including Eleanor Roosevelt, Grace Abbott and Florence Sabin) which were published once a month in the magazine throughout 1931.
Katharine Brush by Leon Gordon (Belarusin-American) - Oil on canvas / 1933 - Loomis Chaffee School (Windsor, Connecticut) #womeninart #art #portrait #LeonGordon #artwork #portraitofawoman #womensart #fineart #LoomisChaffeeSchool #LoomisChaffee #portraitofalady #1930s #fashion #style #eveningdress
