Leopold Seyffert

Leopold Gould Seyffert (January 6, 1887 – June 13, 1956) was an American artist. Born in California, Missouri and raised as a child in Colorado and then Pittsburgh, his career brought him eventually to New York City, via Philadelphia and Chicago. In New York the dealer Macbeth established him as one of the leading portraitists of the 20th century and his over 500 portraits continue to decorate the galleries, rooms and halls of many of America’s museums and institutions.

Included in the many people that Seyffert painted were America's cultural, business and political elite and by the early 1940s these portraits began representing them- as they do today - Henry Clay Frick,(Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh), Fritz Kreisler (National Portrait Gallery), Andrew Mellon (Choate School and BNY Mellon Collection), John Wanamaker (US Postal Museum), Edward T. Stotesbury (Stotesbury Collection), Elizabeth Arden, Samuel Gompers (New York Historical Society), John Graver Johnson (Corcoran Art Gallery), railroad financier Edward Brinton Smith (Private Collection), Charles Lindbergh and David Sarnoff. In addition to the prestige of such commissions, Seyffert was recipient of a long string of prizes and honors given by the major American art organizations and museums, often for his non-commissioned work. In these paintings (like the paintings of children by his older contemporaries, Robert Henri and George Bellows, he painted with a vigorous brushwork and palette that sometimes took into consideration more modern color and other expressive choices.

As a young artist, Seyffert traveled three times to Europe in 1910, 1912, and 1914. Like many young artists he painted from Velasquez in the Prado and was influenced by Hals, Van Gogh and Goya. During these trips he used unique and different people as models and like Van Gogh he wanted ordinary people as subjects. Their unique faces and colorful costumes inspired some of his earliest works. Later his portraits, nudes and flower still lifes kept the lessons learned from these years while adding a more refined and simpler style. Seyffert’s life and career spanned the first half of the 20th Century. He lived, taught and painted in several historic cities and many of his sitters played a significant role in American history, particularly during the roaring 20's.

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