Representing The Real

Insights on the career, techniques and new traveling retrospective of prolific artist Daniel E. Greene.

- John O’Hern

I had set out to talk with Daniel E. Greene about his traveling retrospective exhibition and a new book about his life and work. Among the files of the paintings he sent to us was one of Robert Beverly Hale, a large pastel portrait on panel. Hale (1901-1985) was an artist, a renowned teacher and lecturer on anatomy at the Art Students League and was founder of the department of contemporary American art at the Metropolitan Museum. Greene is considered the foremost pastel artist in the country. The combination of artist and model resulted in an extraordinary portrait that I had to know more about.

“When I was teaching at the Art Students League in the mid-’70s, the League commissioned me to do the portrait,” he recounts. “Bob lived across the street from me on West 67th Street. We were casual friends, and he came over to the studio to pose. By then he was elderly, weak and frail. I selected a pose where he was seated, holding his hands up. He had beautiful hands. Unfortunately he was too weak to hold the pose. I decided, then, to do a standing pose in which his arms could drop naturally.

“The painting was coming along quite well when Bob came in one day wearing a beautiful scarf his wife had knitted for him. Ironically, I had just received a new set of Sennelier pastels, all 524 colors arranged in perfect order and gradations of value. I was able to match each of the colors of the yarn his wife had used in the scarf.

“The portrait is on a 50-by-36-inch panel,” he continues. “Pastel papers and surfaces don’t come that big. A student of mine had a sign shop, and we bought Masonite panels and sprayed them with a mixture of rabbit skin glue and quartz crystals to give the surface a tooth to hold the pastel.”