Glorious Portraits of Writers

I just returned from a short trip to Washington, DC. While I was there, I went to the National Portrait Gallery for the first time. What an amazing museum! First, the building is gorgeous and impressive, including the huge central courtyard with its lovely, lacy high dome, and the soaring, ornate “Great Hall.” There were some great special exhibits, including the controversial, wonderful “Hide/Seek” (about LGBT writers and artists) that has been in the news lately. But best of all were the hundreds of portraits -- paintings, sculptures, and photographs -- of writers, politicians, scientists, musicians, artists, activists, and more. I of course especially focused on portraits of writers. Naturally I had seen pictures of many of the novelists, poets, playwrights, and essayists before, but not these great original works of art, up close. I have to resist listing all of the writers’ portraits I saw, but let me mention a few: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Allen Ginsberg, e. e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Penn Warren, Eugene O’Neill, Frank O’Hara. But the portraits that drew me most were those of the women writers: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Fuller, Joyce Carol Oates, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Janet Flanner, Suzan-Lori Parks, and more. The strong, unique face of Louisa May Alcott is caught forever in a bronze bust. Edith Wharton is immortalized in a painting of her as a small girl. Marianne Moore is shown with her mother, with whom she lived and was close. There is something so striking and immediate about these faces. I couldn’t stop looking at them. Highly recommended.