Elizabeth Shoumatoff

Elizabeth Shoumatoff
Native name	Russian: Елизавета Николаевна Шуматова
Born	Elizabeth Avinoff 1888/10/06 Moscow, Russia
Died	1980/11/30
Occupation	Portrait Artist
Known for	Last portrait of President Roosevelt (FDR)
Notable work	Portraits of FDR, Frick, Dupont, President Johnson

Elizabeth Shoumatoff (Russian: Елизавета Николаевна Шуматова, née Avinoff) (October 6, 1888 – November 30, 1980) was a Russian-American painter who was best known for painting the Unfinished Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Other paintings included Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson.

Shoumatoff was born in Moscow on October 6, 1888, into an aristocratic family in what was then Imperial Russia. Her brother Andrey Avinoff was a prominent entomologist and artist. Elizabeth Shoumatoff went to the United States with her husband Leo Shoumatoff (a member of the Russian Purchasing Commission) in 1917 and after the October Revolution decided to stay there. They eventually made their home on Long Island. Leo Shoumatoff died in 1928 (drowned).

Her extraordinary talent for portraiture brought commissions from some of the most illustrious families in America, Great Britain and Europe. Her clients included members of the Frick, du Pont, Mellon, Woodruff and Firestone families, plus the Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sitting for her at Warm Springs, Georgia, when he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945. When she was working, he said "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head."

She died in November 1980 at age 92 and her estate donated some of the sketches related to the Unfinished Portrait to the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum. Some of her other works and materials from the latter part of her life are now in the Archives of American Art.

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