The portrait is one of the most pure collaborative efforts in the art world. The artist is the creator, but she or he is wholly dependent on the sitter for inspiration and stimulus. When the subject is famous, the artist must often compromise true expression for the vanity of the person being painted. Though that would seemingly make the portrait less appealing artistically, in truth the collaborative nature of the portrait often makes it artistically unique, a blending of the artist's style with the desires of the sitter.
This work takes a fresh look at the portraits of 13 American women (Marian Anderson, Clara Barton, Mary McLeod Bethune, Pearl Buck, Mary Cassatt, Isadora Duncan, Marianne Moore, Georgia O'Keeffe, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman and Martha Washington) and the artists who created them. In examining the work of such artists as Abraham Walkowitz, John Graham, Betsy Graves Reyneau, Michael Alexander Werboff, and Brenda Putnam, one comes to see the unique combination of the personality of the sitter and the style of the artist.