Nicholas Volpe

Nicholas Volpe
1962 portrait of Volpe.
Born	Nicholas Volpe 1911 New Haven, Connecticut
Died	1992 Oceanside, California
Nationality	United States
Education	Syracuse University
Known for	Painter and illustrator
Notable work	Academy Award winner portraits Brown Derby recording artist portraits
Awards	Grammy Award for Best Album Cover

Nicholas A. Volpe (1911 – 1992) was an American artist, noted for his portraits of Hollywood celebrities, presidents, sports figures, and other famous personalities. He is said to have painted more movie stars than any other artist in America.

Volpe was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to an Italian immigrant family. He began his primary education there and became especially talented as a young violinist. His parents sent him to Italy to continue his violin studies, assuming he might take it up as a profession. He grew homesick for his home in the U.S. however, and soon returned to New Haven to finish his high school education.

After Volpe graduated high school, where he had also played football, he was accepted at Syracuse University on a football scholarship. Rather than major in music, he gravitated towards art as he discovered his natural talents as an artist. Upon graduation he was offered a professorship at the university to teach art. He turned down the offer, deciding that he needed more time to develop his artistic skills more fully. He subsequently entered an art contest with thousands of other contestants and was one of six who won the coveted Tiffany Foundation Art Scholarship Award. Among his prizes was the opportunity to live at a private seaside estate in Long Island where he could continue painting in seclusion.

Volpe later accepted a position as a fine art instructor at New York City's Leonardo da Vinci Art School. After a few years there he accepted the post of Dean of Arts at Jacksonville College in Florida, where he spent three years. He next decided to move to Hollywood, California after he received an offer by a studio to design film sets, create make-up and design costumes.

During this period, his talent as a portrait artist was soon noticed, as he had also by then painted or drawn portraits of various stars, and his reputation as a highly skilled artist became widely recognized. As a result, Volpe was given a lifetime contract by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to paint each year's Oscar winning Best Actor and Best Actress. The majority of his Oscar portraits were made with charcoal pencil.