SPELLMAN, Francis Archbishop (1940)
Description:
Half-length, seated in a gilded chair, books to the left, wearing the biretta and holding the pectoral cross. Oil on canvas, 44.1/4” x 34.1/4” (112.3 x 87 cm) signed and dated upper right ‘A. Muller Ury 1940’.
Location:
St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, Yonkers, New York.
Francis Joseph Spellman was born on May 4th, 1889 and died on December 2, 1967. He was ordained on May 14, 1916 and rose to become Archbishop of New York on April 15, 1939 and was created a Cardinal in February 1946. He owned a portrait of Pope Pius XII by Muller-Ury and indeed was shown sitting in front of it in a photograph reproduced on the cover of Life, January 21, 1946.
Muller-Ury executed several portraits of Archbishop Spellman. Jessica Dragonette records in her autobiography, Faith is a Song (New Jersey, 1951) that on her first visit, there undated, but actually in 1940, Muller-Ury had been working on a portrait of Archbishop Spellman ‘all day.’
A portrait of Spellman was exhibited at FRENCH & CO. INC., 210, East 57th Street, New York, April 21 – May 3, 1947, No. 7, and was mentioned in American Art News, Vol. XLVI, April 1947. It is not known which version of his portrait was displayed there.
The duotone photograph in the artist’s papers is stamped Peter A. Juley & Son.
