Robert Seyffert, "Auras of Eminence: Leopold Seyffert, Gilded Age Portrait Painter"
Lectures and Victorian Tea

Schedule

Description

As part of his effort to enlighten the public of the work of a nearly forgotten portraitist, artist Robert Seyffert will give an illustrated lecture at Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum titled “Auras of Excellence: Leopold Seyffert, Gilded Age Portrait Painter”. The talk will be given on Wednesday, August 11, at 4:00pm, as part of Ventfort Hall's 2010 Summer Lecture Series. Seyffert will be on hand to answer questions at a Victorian Tea following his lecture.

 

Leopold Gould Seyffert, Robert's grandfather, was the artist of over 500 portraits of distinguished politicians, philanthropists, businessmen, social leaders and artists, such names as Mellon, Taft, Lindbergh and Frick are listed among his subjects. Robert has spent the last several years tracking down his grandfather's paintings; he now owns about 30. Leopold is considered one of the best American commercial portraitists of his time.

 

Leopold's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Portrait Gallery and the National Academy of Design, among other museums. Grandfather's “reputation was eclipsed by the prevalent modernist aesthetic of the early 20^th century”, according to Robert. “His passion was indeed the human figure – its head, hands and clothing. He was one of the last artists of that tradition – when a sitter sat for hours to be immortalized by the artist whose process had to do with painting – not photograph”. Robert pinpoints Leopold's painting style as a bridge between the Gilded Age and the later developing style of the Ashcan School of Art. Leopold died in 1956, well after the demand for his work declined.

 

The son of German immigrants who settled in Missouri and then Colorado, Leopold later moved to Pittsburgh with his family, and from there attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied with celebrated artists including William Merritt Chase. Leopold later traveled to Spain to study the paintings of Goya and Velazquez, returning around 1915 to begin his career at a portraitist. 

 

Robert, born in 1952, studied painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, and later received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Parsons School of Design in New York. He has worked from studios in both cities. Presently, he teaches at the Arts Student League in New York and has taught drawing and painting in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. He was director of the Alfred and Trafford Klots Residency Program at Rochefort-en-Terre, France, administered by the Maryland Institute College of Art.

 

Among Seyffert's awards are a first prize from the National Arts Club, the Helena Rubinstein grant from the Parsons School of Design, a Greenshields Fellowship, and a Yale at Norfolk Summer School Fellowship. His work resides in many institutional and private collections, including his portrait of author James Michener at the National Portrait Gallery.

Price

$14 member, $16 non-member