Greta Kempton

Martha Greta Kempton (March 22, 1901 – December 9, 1991) was the White House artist during the Truman administration.

Biography

Kempton was born in Vienna and came to the United States in the 1920s. She studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts before emigrating to the United States and in the 1930s was a student at the National Academy of Design and Art Students League, both in New York City.

By the 1930s Kempton was living in California and a well-established portrait painter. Her style was reminiscent of Rembrandt, Rubens, and other European masters. By the 1940s, she had compiled a list of subjects, including Dagmar Nordstrom, one of the Nordstrom Sisters, the families of some Hollywood residents of New Orleans, where she lived with her then-husband, the businessman Ambrose M. McNamara. Kempton became well known in Washington following the unveiling in 1947 of her portrait of Drucie Snyder, the daughter of Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder. Through Snyder, Kempton gained introductions to other high officials of the Truman administration. Later in 1947, she painted a portrait of Bess Truman, and that same year was commissioned to paint a portrait of the President himself - the first of five Kempton paintings for which Mr. Truman posed. The 1947 painting became the official White House portrait of President Truman.

She remained active as a painter well into her eighties and restored many paintings at Church of the Transfiguration, "The Little Church Around the Corner" in New York City. Her works are in the collections of the White House, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Harry S. Truman Library, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the National Portrait Gallery, and a number of museums. Her papers, which include a number of portraits, now form a collection at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.

She died in New York City from heart failure in December 1991, and her ashes were placed in the columbarium in the Church of the Transfiguration, Manhattan.

References

External links

gretakempton.org



Greta Kempton papers, 1945-1977, in the Archives of American Art
Smithsonian Institution

"Portrait Artist Greta Kempton"
Chicago Tonight, May 21, 2013

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kempton, Greta
1901 births
1991 deaths
Artists from Vienna
20th-century American painters
American portrait painters
American women painters
Austrian emigrants to the United States
National Academy of Design alumni
Art Students League of New York alumni
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna alumni
Painters from New York City
20th-century American women artists