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FLORIDA PORTRAITURE

1840-1960

By Alfred R. Frankel

From the beginnings of
the Enlightenment artists
ranked the importance of
the work they produced.
First came the high art
of religious or history
painting, then landscape,
then genre, and finally
portrait art. An artist
could aspire to be a
Leonardo or Botticelli
painting universal truths;
but to be successful
professionally, he or she had to be F.C. von Hausen, The Lady with Red Hair, Palm
not only highly competent, but able Beach, 1950. Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches.
to earn a living; and long before
photography, that meant doing antiques shop to find Frederick von
the lowly but necessary work of Hausen’s, The Lady with Red Hair.
portraiture. Wow! Here, I thought, was Florida’s
That judgement about portraiture Mona Lisa! Well…. not quite La
changed with the artist’s, and the art Gioconda, but I loved her smile.
loving public’s, recognition that the Later I learned that von Hausen
portrait, while specific and personal, had trained in Vienna at the Royal
could also be sublime. Rembrandt Academy of Art, and in 1914, just
and Van Gogh are remembered before the onset of World War I,
for their penetrating self-portraits. left his home for the United States,
Some of the world’s most famous and Damariscotta, Maine. A friend
paintings, The Mona Lisa, The Girl suggested that Palm Beach, with its
with a Pearl Earring, Whistler’s wealth and culture, would be a good
Mother, are all portraits that only winter place to work. He arrived
achieved great fame years after they in 1922 in a Lincoln touring car,
were painted. opened a studio on Worth Avenue
My interest in Florida art inevitably and stayed for more than fifty years.
led me to find Florida portraiture. Henry Flagler and architect and
The first was perhaps the best. founder of Boca Raton, Addison
One day, about twenty years ago, I Mizner, were among his patrons.
wandered into a West Palm Beach Continued on Page 15
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