Gallery Talk on Eudora Welty by Warren Perry, Thursday, April 30

Thursday, April 30, 2009 - 6 pm at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Writer/Researcher Warren Perry will give a talk on the 1988 portrait of author Eudora Welty by Mississippi artist

Mildred Nungester Wolfe. Welty and Wolfe, both natives of Jackson, Mississippi, had known each other for many years.

 

Wolfe wrote about painting the portrait: "In 1988, I asked her if I could come and make a drawing of her in her house. It was very cold that day. The heat was off in her house, and she was sitting in her chair in the living room with her coat on. I didn’t take my coat off either. I very carefully made a full-scale drawing in charcoal, took a photograph, and made some color notes. I used all this information to start on the canvas in the studio so Eudora would not have to sit for the portrait. When I was satisfied, I had her come and look. She liked it."

 

Among Welty's best-known works are The Ponder Heart, which earned her the American Academy of Arts and Letters' prestigious William Dean Howells Medal in 1955, and The Optimist's Daughter, for which she received a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

 

Listen to the audio of this gallery talk: http://www.npg.si.edu/audio/blog_perry_eudora_welty_043009.MP3

Face to Face Gallery Talks are conducted from 6 pm - 6:30 pm on Thursday evenings. Visitors will meet in the F Street lobby of the National Portrait Gallery, 9th Street NW between F and G Streets, NW, and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

 

Image courtesy of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Eudora Alice Welty, 1988, oil on canvas, by Mildred Nungester Wolfe.

Wolfe quotation: Mildred Nungester Wolfe, by Elizabeth Wolfe, Ellen Douglas, Mildred Nungester Wolfe, University Press of Mississippi, 2005.