"adventures" contents

Oscar E. Sanden

Oscar E. Sanden My father — a Presbyterian minister — was my first art teacher. When I was around six years old, he set up a drawing station near his desk in his study, providing me with white typing paper and a fountain pen filled with dark blue ink. He opened a book entitled The Life of Lincoln in Photographs, and told me to make a copy of the first picture. When I finished, he would critique what I had done, commenting on the degree of fidelity to the original. I then had to continue through the book, copying each picture. When we had finished with Lincoln, he gave me another book, The Life of Christ Visualized, and we proceeded, picture by picture, through the book. Not, perhaps, the best art training. The stress was not on creativity, but truthfulness and discipline. My father always encouraged me in my art studies, and was a faithful admirer of my work until his death in 1964.

Milton Caniff

Milton Caniff Milton Caniff was a great comic strip artist who transformed the art with his dramatic and realistic drawings. His two strips, Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon, were read daily by millions all across the country. He was my first artist hero. I wanted to be like Milton Caniff, and to do what he had done. My greatest ambition was to be a comic strip artist. In high school, I drew a strip for the Minneapols Star & Tribune, which ran in a newspaper published for their delivery boys, of which I was one. The editor sent one of my strips to Milton Caniff without my knowing it. Can you imagine the excitement, when a large envelope arrived at my home, with this letter and an autographed drawing of Steve Canyon.

Norman Rockwell Norman Rockwell When I made the transition from cartooning to painting in oils, my hero focus shifted from Caniff to the foremost illustrator of the day, Norman Rockwell. I admired his choice of subject matter and his dazzling, virtuoso style. I had several personal encounters with Rockwell over the years. In 1959, when I was 24, I wrote to him and requested a visit to his studio. I told him that I would be taking some pictures to show to our artists' group in Minneapolis, and that I would promise to stay only ten minutes. I drove all the way from Minneapolis to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and turned up at the appointed time. Mr. Rockwell welcomed me graciously and told me to make myself at home. I recall that he was seated at his easel, painting a picture of Benjamin Franklin in his printshop. I watched the time, and, at the end of my ten minutes, I thanked the great artist and said good-bye. As I started down the driveway, he called after me from the studio door, inviting me to come back at noon for lunch. At 12:00 I returned, and together we walked across the street to the Red Lion Inn, where we enjoyed a long and very informal lunch. A dozen years later, when my first wife died, Mr. Rockwell sent me a beautiful personal letter of sympathy and encouragement. I regret that I have misplaced that wonderful document from a very great man.

Billy Graham

Ruth and Billy Graham with Elizabeth and me, New York, 1995

Elsewhere in this book, I will recount the story of my relationship with Billy Graham, which has extended over more than sixty years. I first met Billy in 1948, when I was thirteen years old. He had appointed my father the dean of the college of liberal arts at the Northwestern Schools (now Northwestern College) in Minneapolis, of which Billy was president. Later, after I had graduated from art school in Minneapolis, I joined the Graham organization staff as an artist, a position I held for nine years. Billy has been unfailingly gracious and generous to me and to my family. After I had left his employment and moved to New York, he continued to send me a monthly retainer and give me art assignments. I would not have been able to make the transition to New York without this generous help.

Albert Dorne

Albert Dorne

Albert Dorne was one of the most successful illustrators in American history. At the height of his fame and financial success, he took time out to create the Famous Artists School, a correspondence school for artists, based in Westport, Connecticut. Mr. Dorne came to the Minneapolis School of Art to lecture, during the time I was enrolled there as a student. I was working on a large mural-type painting in one of the upstairs studios the day that Mr. Dorne visited the school. He came to my studio, enthused about my project, took a seat on the old couch I had along one wall, and stayed for a considerable length of time, encouraging me and offering helpful suggestions about my project. He asked me to come to his studio when I visited New York. From that time on, I was used regularly in the Famous Artists School advertising. In one ad, Dorne arranged for me to be photographed boarding a small plane at the Minneapolis airport, for an ad that said "I travel internationally for important art assignments." When I finally moved from Minnesota to New York, I toyed with the idea of becoming an instructor at the Famous Artists School in Westport. Instead, I began teaching at the Art Students League in New York. Albert Dorne had the gift of encouraging and inspiring everyone who came in contact with him.

Dr. Bryant M. Kirkland

Bryant M. Kirkland

Bryant M. Kirkland was the minister of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. He was my family's pastor for 25 years. Dr. Kirkland buried my first wife, married Elizabeth and me, baptised our children, and was instrumental in guiding all of us in the forming of our beliefs and convictions. He was endlessly supportive of our activities, even to the point of flying to Chicago to speak four times to our National Artist's Seminar there in 1984. Dr. Kirkland's great gift was that he could express his very orthodox, conservative Christian faith in a modern idiom that was eminently attractive to sophisticated New York audiences.

John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent

When I was a student at the Minneapolis School of Art, 1952 - 56, the name of Sargent was practically a dirty word. I never once heard Sargent referred to in any way other than condemnatory. Sargent, in the views of the art school faculty (which I believe was representative of the art world generally at that time, was an example of the worst that art can aspire to. This bewildered me, because I admired Sargent so very much. His work was endlessly fascinating to me. Well, that was then. Today (2005) Sargent is enjoying a tremendous worldwide resurgence of interest. The great museums are competing with one another to feature his work in major exhibitions. The Metropolitan Museum is a good example. Their recent Velasquez/Manet exhibit featured the work of the great Spanish master hung alongside works by artists who had been influenced by him. The show included many works by Sargent. Most of the other artists, notably Manet himself, suffered terribly by the comparison. Next to Velasquez, Manet looked downright amateur. Sargent was the star of the exhibition, with his works appearing vibrant and strong when hung in juxtaposition with his great Spanish mentor. The reputation of Sargent rose even higher. Prices for Sargent works at auction are rising astronomically. He was one of my super-heroes in the fifties, and he remains so today.


Samuel Edmund Oppenheim

Emily and Samuel Oppenheim with JHS, 1972

You will find a great deal about Samuel Oppenheim in this book. He was my teacher and mentor at the Art Students League of New York for two years, and the man who set me on my course as an artist and a portrait painter. I owe an incalculable debt to him. He taught me to see, to understand what I was seeing, and to think in terms of the language of painting. Mr. Oppenheim's principal emphases were: careful observation of tonal values, special care to edges, making the brushstrokes flow, one into another throughout the painting, and careful, steady drawing. He was quiet, reserved (almost shy) but sensitive and gracious. His wife Emily, also an artist, continues to maintain his two homes and studios, in Provincetown, Massachusetts and Naples, Florida.

Everett Raymond Kinstler Photo courtesy of International Artist Publishing, Inc.

Everett Raymond Kinstler

When I was appointed to the teaching faculty of the Art Students League in 1971, Everett Raymond Kinstler was already recognized as one of the nation's best known artists and one of the leading portrait painters of the day. I was immediately captivated by his energetic, dynamic style and fresh, contemporary approach. His League class was enormous. Some of his students were also enrolled in my evening class, and I always tried to learn from them as much as I could about their great instructor's methods and teaching principles. It's now 35 years later, and Ray's fame has multiplied many times. No other artist today can lay as authoritative a claim to the mantle of Sargent. A Kinstler portrait is possessed of an extraordinary energy, a palpable kind of electricity that the viewer can feel but finds himself powerless to fully explain. The image is struck in with dash and vigor - there is no fussing over details. A Kinstler portrait head is amazingly simple in execution, but possessed of a "radiant energy" which sets the painting alive with light and life. He remains for me the most exciting and interesting contemporary painter.

"adventures" contents