MR. MCNAUGHT: Bill McNaught speaking to William Draper on June 6, 1977. We were talking, Mr. Draper, about your exhibition at Mirdler's in 1950 and the fact that there were landscape paintings. Now had you in fact shown landscape paintings anywhere before? MR. DRAPER: Oh, I had always -- MR. MCNAUGHT: In an exhibition, in an exhibition? MR. DRAPER: Yes. Well, all the years that I painted I've shown them, landscapes. But when I was a portrait painter and I said at the National Academy I would send a portrait in because I felt I was a portrait painter. But I've been always painting landscapes. As a matter of fact in the last few years I've been doing, exhibiting them because I was -- somebody about 12 years ago said, oh, but Draper is merely a portrait painter, which sort of got my dander up because I've always been painting landscapes and painting wherever I've gone to do portraits and I'll paint. I've always painted. I don't consider -- well, I do know that I'm a good portrait painter but I also feel like a landscape painter. MR. MCNAUGHT: Yes. MR. DRAPER: And so -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Your last exhibition in New York, just very recently, you showed landscapes. MR. DRAPER: All landscapes. MR. MCNAUGHT: At the [inaudible] Gallery. MR. DRAPER: Yes. And then I've had four, well I guess three at the Graham Gallery in the last eight years. MR. MCNAUGHT: Of landscapes? MR. DRAPER: Of landscapes, no portraits. I've had three in Palm Beach. I had one portrait show in Palm Beach, but three other landscape shows. MR. MCNAUGHT: So in fact recently most of your exhibitions have been of your landscapes? MR. DRAPER: Oh, yes. Two in Saratoga, three in Nantucket, one in Northeast Harbor, always landscapes. MR. MCNAUGHT: Always landscapes. MR. DRAPER: No portraits. I haven't shown a portrait for years. There's no place in the first place. This is one of my things that makes me very angry today. MR. MCNAUGHT: What's that? MR. DRAPER: That you cannot -- there's not a place to show a portrait. Now I'll tell you very frankly I was furious -- well, in the first place I have two portraits in the National Portrait Gallery and I have one of President Kennedy there and I have one of Richard Rodgers, both commissioned, one by Jackie who wanted, Jackie Onassis gave that one to the National Portrait Gallery, and Richard Rodgers commissioned me to paint him because he had to have a picture there. I don't think his can be shown until after, ten years after he dies so it can be on special exhibitions there but I don't think many people know of its existence. Then I had one of Paul Mellon in the National Gallery. But mostly -- there's no place I can show portraits at all. I mean, I can show at the Century Club, I'm a member, so in the professionals show I put a portrait in or a landscape. But you can send a landscape anywhere. Nobody wants a portrait. MR. MCNAUGHT: Well, could it -- part of the reason might be that in exhibitions at galleries where the paintings are for sale presumably most of the portraits you do are commissions which means there will be nothing in it for the gallery for showing it if the work has already been sold. MR. DRAPER: Oh, I see that point of view. But I also have done many portraits. For instance I did send one up to the Allied Artists of America of my mentor -- not mentor, what do you call them? At the Arts Students League he was in charge of my -- what do you call them? In charge of the --- getting the -- now I'm getting embarrassed because of this wheel turning and it's stopped. [Audio Break.] MR. DRAPER: I've got the word, my monitor, the monitor at the Art Students League. Eric, I painted him with a turtleneck sweater, white -- and Irish turtleneck sweater with a Navy coat thrown over his back. It wasn't a portrait. It was sort of a nice composition. Well, I got the Grace Peterson prize at the Allied Artists recently, about two years ago. But that's the only place that I've shown and you can't -- now this is why I was saying I was getting angry. The National Portrait Gallery where I have two portraits there, Gardner Cox [phonetic] has portraits there, Al Murray has. I mean, all the best portrait painters in the country who are painting the people in the world today who are of importance, which is part of the historical record, and we had our works, well in General Motors and the Chrysler Building and this and that, the heads of schools, colleges. I had one of Puzey [phonetic], one of -- I mean, in all the colleges. MR. MCNAUGHT: Many heads of state. MR. DRAPER: Heads of state. I've done Ambassador Annenberg, you know, the whole thing. Then to have a show -- I don't know who arranged it at the National Portrait Gallery of portraits, self-portraits by artists by portrait painters from Stewart Stein to the present day. Not one of the well-known portrait painters was in it. They had self-portraits up, from Stewart up for the 20th century and then suddenly when it comes to this time they had Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jamie Wyeth with a pumpkin over his head. If that's a self-portrait I would like -- well, maybe it is. I'm not going to say a word. But none of us had -- I've done a self-portrait. I would have done a brilliant one for the show if I had been asked. Here we have our own works in the National Portrait Gallery and we're not included in an exhibition of portraits of artists from Colonial times up to the present day. Now I think that's rather shocking. Whoever got that show up makes me made. Nobody, none of us showed, can show portraits anywhere. I can show, send a landscape somewhere, but if I send a portrait -- I wont' send it because I know damn well it will be turned down anyway. MR. MCNAUGHT: It's extraordinary. MR. DRAPER: And you think it out. MR. MCNAUGHT: They're the ones always being asked to do the portraits. MR. DRAPER: Yeah. I'm not -- well, you can go to the Whitney and you'll see one done by Pearlstein that's usually nude and it's a good, very photographic likeness. Then there's a guy named, is it Ross or somebody, I can't remember if it's Close. MR. MCNAUGHT: Close. MR. DRAPER: Close. Who does enlargements of heads, great big heads, which are rather fascinating. MR. MCNAUGHT: He's just had a show. MR. DRAPER: Yeah. Well, I think that they're interesting, but I must say that then there's Alice Neale. Well, if you do something this little ugly, this little -- it's drawn funny, now I'm beginning to think maybe I should just do from now on like Pearlstein. They said -- I saw in Time magazine Pearlstein's studio is always -- he has his friends sitting around nude which he paints all the time. Well, I think nothing could be more fun than to have a lot of nude friends around in my studio to paint them. I think -- but maybe that's already been done now you see. What can I do? I know I can paint flesh beautifully. I would love to paint nudes. I'm not a bit conservative in that way. Maybe that's what I should do instead of portraits. MR. MCNAUGHT: Have you painted nudes? MR. DRAPER: Oh, sure, yeah, plenty of nudes. I think I'll do a nude of myself except that's been done if you think of it. MR. MCNAUGHT: It's interesting the way you say it now, the lack of opportunities to exhibit portraits. You find it much easier exhibiting the landscapes. Tell me, have you -- you mentioned just all the exhibitions recently that you've had of landscape paintings. Was it like that in the 60's and the 50's as well? Did you have a lot of exhibitions then? MR. DRAPER: Well, I didn't -- well, I didn't show much then. I was so busy painting pictures, portraits. It was only when I suddenly heard that I was merely a portrait painter that I got these. MR. MCNAUGHT: You decided to prove that that was just one facet of your art. MR. DRAPER: And so then I took all of my paintings and had a big show of -- I had been all over and I had painted the Shah of Iran, I've done the rug washing in Ray and the Persian rugs were laying out. When I was in Africa, in Kenya, of Kenya, I don't what it is, I painted all the animals. I painted, well, just elephants this place and that. I did a lot of nice studies in Kenya. MR. MCNAUGHT: At this point you're probably most well known as a portrait painter but also known by virtue of the fact that you had this many exhibitions as a landscape painter, but -- MR. DRAPER: I would say I'm internationally known as a portrait painter. MR. MCNAUGHT: Certainly. MR. DRAPER: And nationally known, maybe not even -- on the Eastern Coast -- MR. MCNAUGHT: A respectable reputation certainly as a landscape painter. MR. DRAPER: A landscape painter. MR. MCNAUGHT: But it is as a portrait painter that I think that the historical record that one would be interested in learning something about the people that you painted, who you painted and some stories about them. But first off I would like to ask you about painting itself without your art and who you felt was the great influences on your art. You've told us already about your early interest in art, your training, the schools you attended and so on. Can you tell me as a portrait painter which artists of the past, which well known portraitists of the past influenced you the most? MR. DRAPER: Well, it's not very difficult, although I don't think my painting particularly looks like any of them. But I would say -- most people -- I would say almost Robert Henri I look more like than anyone and yet I've never studied him. People say, oh, that looks like Robert Henri. MR. MCNAUGHT: Really? MR. DRAPER: And -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Did you ever go -- constantly think about him, that's how you wanted to paint? MR. DRAPER: No, I can't say anything, nothing -- no, not at all. I just admired -- I like his paintings but I never studied his paintings. MR. MCNAUGHT: You did. MR. DRAPER: It just seemed to come out and that's sort of in that general way I would say, except it's quite different. I think that -- well, ones I admired mostly were [inaudible] and France Hall, Van Dyke, Rubens, Valkan, Augustus John, Sargent of course more than anything. MR. MCNAUGHT: Sargent? MR. DRAPER: Sargent I think is great. I think that Mancini -- do you know Mancini, an Italian artist? He's a terrific painter. Then of course -- my mind has gone blank but you know the one with the long necks. MR. MCNAUGHT: Vodini [phonetic]? MR. DRAPER: Vodini. I think Vodini is great. MR. MCNAUGHT: Vodini is wonderful. MR. DRAPER: Vodini's sketches and Vodini's little interiors are absolutely beautiful. Nobody knows that Vodini could even do those but they're almost better than his portraits. He is a great painter and so is Sargent. MR. MCNAUGHT: It's interesting taking it to Sargent and looking at the landscape of yours and seeing -- I mean, Sargent who I think of as both a portrait painter and a landscape artist. I can see how your work is getting into the same thing. MR. DRAPER: Well, even this picture right here is in the vein of Sargent. I mean -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Exactly. MR. DRAPER: -- although it's not like Sargent but it's -- it's realistic. MR. MCNAUGHT: Do you consciously ever as a student look at Sargent's think and about painting that way, in brush stroke for example? MR. DRAPER: When I was -- no, my brush stroke, my technique just developed by itself. I think I was probably influenced by it because I loved brush -- I loved the way France Hall's, and I like -- I remember seeing a -- I forgot which portrait it was but Sargent had done a chain across some guy's stomach, a gold chain across -- I could see -- I was just, how in the world. I studied how he had done that chain. He had obviously put a little yellow, bright yellow on one end of the brush and darker. He must have just tell the brush and twisted it this way across because there was a little flick. I'm sure that that's the way he did it. It looks like one stroke. I remember painting my sister Lilla years ago and the mouth looked too small. I said, oh, there's something wrong with it. I've got make it bigger. So I took my brush and went it's got to be bigger, plunk, and luckily there was a little darker paint and a little lighter paint on the brush, which was a complete accident, and I took the brush away and there was the mouth completely done. That happens a lot. I will call on God, I will ask God to paint for me. This is what he does. This sounds sort of supernatural but -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Explain that further. MR. DRAPER: All right, he does. I found that -- I used to get so discouraged and would make -- the paintings would get worse and worse and they would look like a complete amateur, one of my students who after five days fussing on the thing. It would be just awful. And I would say -- well, it's sort of like every day and every way you're getting better and better like an apple. You know, that -- what is it the -- every day and every way I'm -- not Christian Science but it's thinking along those lines. And then I just say I can do it. God, help me do it, and ask God and suddenly everything would be right. I would have to think that everything is going well and then it does. If you think, God this stinks, it will just drop down and be the most God- awful looking mess you've ever seen. So you have to voice it to yourself. MR. MCNAUGHT: It's optimism. MR. DRAPER: You have to be optimistic and think. It's got to flow I think. Gee, isn't this good. Oh, hot dog. I was doing that when I was painting Cardinal Simmons and I felt a little wrong. I was painting him about two years ago. He had flown over from Brussels to pose for me and he's the primate of Belgium and a very liberal cardinal. I was having such a good time with him. I was telling him that sometimes I call on God to paint for me and he looked a little surprised. I said, "Well, do you want me to do it for you now?" And I did. I said, "Come on, God, paint." Then he gave me this book called The Power of [inaudible] after he finished. He wrote in the front of it, "To William Draper whom God has given so many marvelous gifts to in painting," or something of that which -- and then I felt a little guilty because, I mean, I'm not taking advantage of God but I do ask him and God has taken care of me I can tell right from the time I was pulled out of that plane and walking down the corridor and hearing that thing. MR. MCNAUGHT: These instances -- MR. DRAPER: I just have faith in God. MR. MCNAUGHT: Do you ever -- well, when you're painting pictures say on a given day and it's just not going right do you ever just quit for the day, tell the sitter to go home and say I'm sorry but you'll have to -- MR. DRAPER: No. I'll usually work. MR. MCNAUGHT: You know when you just feel it's not going right. MR. DRAPER: I go on anyway until it goes right. MR. MCNAUGHT: Is that [inaudible]. MR. DRAPER: I'll destroy it. I mean, I won't scratch it out. I'll paint on it until the time comes to stop and then it will look awful and I'll come back in the afternoon and look at it and say, God, doesn't this stink. That eye is all wrong. I would paint it out. MR. MCNAUGHT: You would just paint it out? MR. DRAPER: Take it out. It's the way -- I never work over two hours. I do on landscape, but over two hours on a portrait at a time because after two hours I find that -- you'll find everything is wrong. I mean, you think everything looks right but an eye can be half an inch too high and you don't see it, or a head will be turned like this. MR. MCNAUGHT: It's best to get away from -- MR. DRAPER: Getting away and looking. I always have the telephone, answer the telephone. When Cardinal Cook was posing for me he would have his hands posed and the telephone would ring and I would go over and answer it. He would get furious with me. I said, "Well, Your Eminence," I think that's what I called him. I would say, "Don't get angry because every time I answer the phone it gives me a fresh look when I come back and also if I don't answer it and it rings I'll be wondering who it is and won't be able to concentrate." That's perfectly true. I don't mind being interrupted. I'll go over and say hello and then I'll say somebody is posing. I can't talk long. I'll come back and when I come back I get a completely -- and when I work I -- it's a terrible temptation to work on the head, you just keep working on the head. You've got to force yourself to look down and work on the hand or work somewhere else. Then you look up and you see what's wrong. You look down here. Another thing you'll find, if you look at somebody, I'm looking at you now, your head is a different color than your hand. Your forehead is a different color than across through your cheeks. Your neck is a different color. Well, so many artists have skin tones, flesh, mixed up, light, dark and medium. They put it on and it looks just like a wax model to me. Well, a hand is hanging down in the first place and it will turn pink. The blood rushes to it. If a hand is up over the forehead or up on the top of the head it turns it blue or white. The blood runs out. All around, the neck is usually greener than the checks. If you put all these variations in it will look alive you see. MR. MCNAUGHT: Fascinating. MR. DRAPER: And nobody -- and these big general areas of colors and -- for instance a wall behind is gray. Well, the gray on one side will be quite a different color because it might be purple gray on one side but because of sun reflection it will be a warm yellow gray on the other side. Yet the whole thing together if you paint it right will just look grey. Or a suit will have different colors all through it. It depends. Well, that's the whole thing I feel to make a thing look alive. Then you have to also think of the in and out. Everybody is talking about two dimensional form today, and minimal art, and they want the thing to look flat as if it doesn't come off the wall in any way. Well, in the old days it seemed to me they liked perspective and you would get in and out. I know that myself you have to have -- I can see you sitting there and I see that your knee is about two-and-a-half feet in front of your nose and you have to show that. The knee has to be made big enough so that it's two-and-a-half feet out in the picture. That's -- a lot of times I will have to admit it's not done. An artist I know, a well-known artist who I think does beautiful charcoal drawings, I won't say his name, he will turn -- and he goes -- it's somebody with an arm over a chair like this you see. The arm -- as he measures it's perfectly right. He'll measure the length of the head probably from the top of the head to the chin and then from the chin down. It's probably where the elbow is if you measure. But really it's because the elbow is sticking out forward. Then he will end it there, but not make the elbow come forward so the arm looks as if it's down, straight down and cut off here, cut off about -- well, let's see, about eight inches down from the shoulder when it measures that way but then the elbow has got to be bigger to come out. The arm has to be bigger so that it's coming out and then it looks as if it's on the same plane as the shoulder. Do you understand what I mean? MR. MCNAUGHT: I do. MR. DRAPER: I think I don't explain it very well. All of that I think is very important, at least to me, and today that seems to be the least of anybody's worries because they -- and this talk of two dimensional form, I don't -- I think form in the first place if you look in the dictionary, form is three dimensional. Isn't that what form is? But I've seen that phrase, two-dimensional form. MR. MCNAUGHT: Yeah. MR. DRAPER: That's a lot of rot. I don't understand a lot of the art criticism today and I've been painting for a hell of a long time. You would think I would understand what they were talking about. MR. MCNAUGHT: Who are some of the other portrait painters today who you respect whose work you know? MR. DRAPER: Well, I will tell you. Gardner Cox I think is an excellent portrait painter. Then there's Ray Kinsler. Edward Raymond Kinsler I think is very good, a good friend of mine. Dick Sipert, another very good friend. And Travert Watts [phonetic] of course who just died this year was one of my very good friends and a marvelous painter. I think he was one of the best landscape painters I've ever known and very good at portraits, but his landscapes really of his chateau -- he had this chateau in Roche Montere [phonetic]. Beautiful paintings he did around Brittany and also around Bowanwald [phonetic]. David Swayze is another one. MR. MCNAUGHT: Are these people who are all living now? MR. DRAPER: Yes, yeah. MR. MCNAUGHT: We were talking about -- MR. DRAPER: Al Murray is another. He was a combat artist when I was. MR. MCNAUGHT: Yes. You mentioned Sargent and Vodini. Between the group -- between those artists, that sort of the turn century artists and the ones that you mentioned now who were the portrait painters say over the last 50 years or so, 50 or 60 years -- MR. DRAPER: Well, the ones that I know of -- MR. MCNAUGHT: -- who do you think of as important to portrait painting? MR. DRAPER: Well, I think -- well, I don't know how far back I can go. I mean, my knowledge of the history of art is very poor. That's what I got a D in in Harvard. But Arpin for instance, when was Arpin? He was about -- I don't even know. He was about the time of Sargent I would say or a little earlier, or maybe about the time of Augustus John. They were all -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Yeah. MR. DRAPER: -- Augustus John. And before that -- I'm trying to -- well, Reynolds was further back. MR. MCNAUGHT: No, I mean other twentieth century. MR. DRAPER: Twentieth century. Zahn, Zahn. Do you remember Zahn? I'm just trying to think of other twentieth century ones. MR. MCNAUGHT: No, any -- but there were particular -- MR. DRAPER: Hawthorne of course. Hawthorne was very important to me, Charles W. Hawthorne. William Chase was a very important -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Oh, William Chase, yes. MR. DRAPER: Oh, and I'll tell you something quite interesting. Mirdlers had a show recently of William Chase. MR. MCNAUGHT: Yes, I saw that. MR. DRAPER: This old man was overheard by Jamie Androtti [phonetic] who is a good friend of mine who works a Mirdlers. He suddenly heard this old man saying to somebody else, "Why, look, that hand -- that's a Draper hand right there." And so he went up and talked to the old man. He was -- he had studied with me at the Art Students League. I was so flattered to hear him say, "Look at that. It's a Draper hand. It looks just like Draper." That was William Chase, William Merritt Chase. But I guess I'm very influenced by that school you see because that's who I was studying with in the 30's and all. I like that type of painting. I mean, I think mine has gone on. It's a little more contemporary, particularly my portraits I would say. My portraits -- I think -- now this is true. As you paint you develop, not necessarily you don't try to develop a style but a style evolves I think. MR. MCNAUGHT: It becomes your style. MR. DRAPER: People look at my pictures and any one they see they know it's me. MR. MCNAUGHT: They know it's by William Draper. MR. DRAPER: And it's very interesting in my class, one little boy one time came up to me. He had been in about two months. He said, "Mr. Draper, do you think I have any style now?" And of course I was -- when people are paying me to criticize them I can be quite nasty. I said, "What do you mean do you have any style?" I said, "No, you have no style whatsoever, and if you think about style at this stage in the game you'll never have any. If you just don't think about style and paint sincerely and go for ten years and work hard you might if you're lucky develop a little style." I know I'm right because he was trying to do these different things to get -- to be stylish, something or the other, and it didn't work. MR. MCNAUGHT: Now tell me, you mentioned him and you mentioned students before. Where have you taught and how often have you taught? MR. DRAPER: Well, I haven't taught much at all except -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Were these in classes or private students or -- MR. DRAPER: I've never taught -- MR. MCNAUGHT: You taught at the Art Students League. MR. DRAPER: I never taught at all until I taught at the Art Students League. MR. MCNAUGHT: When did you first teach there? MR. DRAPER: And I think that was about 1969 until about 1975. MR. MCNAUGHT: You hadn't had any students before 1969? MR. DRAPER: Never. MR. MCNAUGHT: And did you enjoy that? MR. DRAPER: I loved it and I had -- I loved coming in. They would say, oh the Maestro is here. They all called me Maestro. I had a big class. I had about 40 students. MR. MCNAUGHT: Really? MR. DRAPER: And it was the largest class. They would all flock in and I was very popular. They still want me to teach there and people still call me up. MR. MCNAUGHT: Do you just find you don't have time for it or -- MR. DRAPER: Well, I found I didn't have time. If you take two mornings a week, that's what I was doing, and then somebody would fly from Indianapolis or from the West Coast to come in, arrive Monday morning, I would have not even met them. They knock on the door at 10:00 and come in. You say good morning just to, whatever it is, and then -- I'll tell you who came there, Norman Chandler for instance who was the head of the Los Angeles Times, I painted his wife Buffie Chandler for their music center too, and they both came to New York to pose. Well, if they come and pose and they're going to go back, I would tell them I can do it in a week, which I can no matter what size, Monday through Friday, well then if you're teaching two mornings a week, Tuesday and Thursday mornings -- MR. MCNAUGHT: It takes that -- MR. DRAPER: -- you suddenly realize, you get rather nervous toward Friday and I found after doing it for the last two or three years I just decided I couldn't do it and so I haven't. MR. MCNAUGHT: Did you think of these students at the Art Students League as different from the people you remember, the students you remember at the National Academy of Design 30 years before? Was it just -- MR. DRAPER: No, I felt very relaxed with them, and then of course there would be lots of old ladies and then you would find very talented ones who you would be more interested in. I tried to be very fair, to go around and talk to each one and have it come out at the end of the morning. I will tell you a funny story about one time I came in -- I had the first hour from 9:00 to 10:00 they're supposed to sketch fast sketches, drawing five-minute sketches of the model, quick sketches. You're supposed to walk, look around, see whether the body is in a circle or any shape and watch the lines as they carry through this line. The hand would come down for instance into that line you see and all around. So I came in one morning and there was this ballet dance who was posing and she tried to -- she was standing in all these different positions, number five, and number one, and all of this, very stiff. And I said, "Now, come on, loosen up. Let's get some, a little emotion in this." And she said, "Why Deadaliff [phonetic] would roll over in his grave." No, she didn't Deadaliff. She said, "Degas would roll over in his grave, Mr. Draper." I said, "What do you mean?" And then she got furious and sort of very uppity and nasty. Then it came along to 10:00 to 12:00 and she got a pose and was posing for a week in this pose you see. Then about 10:30 there was a break and we all went in to have coffee. It happened there was an empty chair right next to hers. I mean, they had been saving it for me but the model was right there. So I had to sit next to her and I wasn't getting on with her at all. She said -- and I tried to be nice. I sat down and said, "Tell me, where did you study ballet?" And she said, "Oh, I studied with George" -- what was his name -- "George Zurich [phonetic]. But of course you've never heard of him." And I said, "Now listen my dear, not only have I heard of him he posed for me. I painted him in Laprimidi Dufawn [phonetic]." And the class laughed, they loved it. It was just such a -- I mean, it was so amazing because she was being so rude and saying I knew nothing about the ballet and I had painted him. I also had studied ballet also. As a matter of fact I was offered a job in the World's Fair in 1939 with the Fourth Ballet. MR. MCNAUGHT: To dance? MR. DRAPER: To dance. MR. MCNAUGHT: Did you take the job? MR. DRAPER: No. MR. MCNAUGHT: No. Why were you offered? Had you been studying ballet? MR. DRAPER: Now this is interesting I'll tell you. I had studied for a year. I had never even told the family because in those days it was considered sort of flooty, I don't know. But I wanted -- I always loved to dance and Paul Draper, a cousin of mine, I was going to paint the ballet. He said, "Bill, if you're going to paint it you ought to know the positions. You can't just go paint the ballet. You've got to know the first position, the fifth position, and all of the things." So he said, "I'm going to the School of American Ballet. You should" -- what? [Audio Break.] MR. DRAPER: All right, I'll finish this story. And Paul Draper told me I should study to know the positions. So -- and he said, "I'm going there myself." He was dancing at the Persian Room at the time. He was a famous dancer as you know. MR. MCNAUGHT: Paul Draper? MR. DRAPER: Paul Draper. And he used to dance -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Any relation -- MR. DRAPER: -- tap dance -- yes, third cousin once removed. MR. MCNAUGHT: Really? MR. DRAPER: He used to tap dance at the Persian Room to Bach. He was great, almost as great as Fred Astaire. I mean, his reputation was very good. And so I started out three times a week in the fall of 1938 or 9, I forget. The World's Fair had started. There were little girls and boys about oh, 10 and 12 years old. I would do it from 4:00 to 6:00 three times a week. By the half year I had gotten to be quite good and I was promoted up to the top class in the school and then I was allowed to go in the men's class which had -- was once a week with Vilzak and Sholer [phonetic], and they were all the Broadway stars. There would be Igleski [phonetic], Uskavich [phonetic], Paul Draper, William Dollar, Freddie Franklin. All of them would come in, and there were 16 of us, and I, myself and two other guys in the school -- Nickie McGallinis [phonetic] who just died, he was with the New York City Center Ballet but he just died recently but he was a star for years there, Nickie McGallinis, and this other guy and myself. We would have to jump up and turn in the air and do all of this. Nobody could laugh you see. But imagine having to do all of this with these stars. MR. MCNAUGHT: Amazing. MR. DRAPER: And then that summer they tried to pick a corps de ballet for this Ford ballet company which was selling Ford cars. They had a performance and then another shift, another performance, and I was one out of the school who was picked to be in the corps de ballet and I was about 25 I guess then. So I thought that was pretty good, wasn't it? MR. MCNAUGHT: Very good. MR. DRAPER: And yet the only -- MR. MCNAUGHT: But you declined? MR. DRAPER: I declined. And the only trouble was when I tried to pirouette and I was sweating my glasses would fly off across the room and that wouldn't have been very good on Broadway. Well -- [Audio Break.] MR. DRAPER: Okay. Well now talking about glasses flying off, I wanted to get some contact lenses about that time and I knew this girl who was named Tubby Wells whose family was the head of American Optical Company. She had some contact lenses, which were -- in those days they were -- MR. MCNAUGHT: When was this? MR. DRAPER: About 1930, about that time 1938 I guess. MR. MCNAUGHT: Oh, just before the war? MR. DRAPER: About '37. Before the war. The contact lenses they had then had to be very large. They fit in the whole eye and they had to take a cast of hot wax of your eyeball and then make it, make the lens. Well, I went to the doctor and they put Novocain in my eyes and took the hot was cast of each eye, and in taking the hot wax cast out they -- well, I would say it didn't hurt or anything so I went back to my apartment which was at 434 -- I said 534 before this -- 434 East 52nd to my studio. They said in two hours you'll be able to see all right. Well, in two hours I felt as if I had been crying with that lump in your throat although I wasn't crying. I thought I better call the doctor and tell him. Well, I couldn't even find to see the name in the telephone book and everything was blurred. So I called up and asked information. They said you can find it in your directory. I said, I'm very sorry but I'm blind. And they were, oh, I'm so sorry. So she gave me the number. I've used that ever since. So the nurse came running. She closed the office and the doctor wasn't there. She came down to the studio and took me in a taxi down to the eye and ear hospital in New York, down on 22nd Street or whatever it was. They bandaged my eyes and I was there for two weeks in the hospital with my eyes bandaged. I only told my sister Grace. I was so ashamed of the whole thing, that I was trying to get contact lenses. It really was because I felt silly getting them. I didn't want the family to know. After two weeks they took the bandages off and I could see. They were afraid it might grow into scar tissue you see, but it grew in clear. Then my one eye, the left eye, I could see much clearer than before. It was almost -- and the guy said, oh, we've got a new cure for myopia. MR. MCNAUGHT: Hot wax, it's extraordinary. MR. DRAPER: Then I went down to do a portrait in Baltimore, Fen Kaiser's wife, it was a wedding present. Fen had commissioned me to give it to her. I went to John Hopkins, went to the doctor there. I forgot his name. He was a very famous eye doctor. He gave me new glasses to do the portrait in and halfway through the portrait I began not to be able to see very clearly again. Then I got out my old glasses and they were perfect. You see the muscles had been rested or something and the pupil had grown in perfectly round. But then the muscle started pulling around the way it was and so it went right back. MR. MCNAUGHT: Oh, I see. MR. DRAPER: And so I was very lucky. MR. MCNAUGHT: Particularly for your profession, very lucky. MR. DRAPER: And I still -- MR. MCNAUGHT: If it had done permanent damage with that early eye contact lenses -- MR. DRAPER: Well, I have -- I've got them now. They're soft lenses. I never wear them anyway. MR. MCNAUGHT: Yeah. [Audio Break.] MR. MCNAUGHT: As a portrait painter, Mr. Draper, you've painted many of the leading figures in the world of the arts and politics, international smart set, international heads of states an so on. Now I think it would be interesting for you to record now some of the stories that you think would be of interest, some of the insights that you alone having spent a week or longer with someone like the Shah of Iran, or the President of the United States, or a senator or a surgeon, or a society figure that you might be able to tell or would like to tell. MR. DRAPER: Well, did I tell a story yet about Dr. Mayo and going out there and all standing on our heads? MR. MCNAUGHT: No, I don't think you have. MR. DRAPER: Well, that was very funny. I was going to paint -- this was a long time ago. Dr. Mayo came to town and went to Portraits Incorporated looking for somebody to paint his father, Charles Mayo, from photographs. MR. MCNAUGHT: Charles Mayo was dead by this time? MR. DRAPER: He was dead by this time. Charles and Will Mayo, two great doctors. And Chuck, this is Charles Mayo, was a very good surgeon and he was the head of the Mayo Clinic at this time. He came to New York and went to Portraits, Inc. and they told him about me and that I would do this thing from photographs. He came up to see me at the house here and Barbara and I were sitting around getting coffee or something. Willie came home from Buckley School and Willie was very good at walking on his hands. He could walk around the gym on his hands five or six times. He was famous for walking on his hands. When Willie came home here he would walk down the hall on his hands and come into the room. I said, "Willie, this is Dr. Mayo from the Mayo Clinic and this is my son, Willie." Willie still stayed on his hands and said, "How do you do, Dr. Mayo." Then Dr. Mayo said, "Oh, I can stand on my head." So he proceeded to stand on his head. And I said, "Oh, but I can stand on my head too." So I stood on my head. Well, then my wife said, "I can stand on my head." So all three of us stood on our heads and Willie was standing on his hands. MR. MCNAUGHT: Standing on his hands. MR. DRAPER: And then we stood there for a while and we had a chat a little bit and then we all came down. He said, "Well, this is great. I think you should do my father. You can do that too, but I think you should come out to Mayo with me and paint me." And so that was great. MR. MCNAUGHT: Did you? MR. DRAPER: So I did go out there. Then in arriving -- MR. MCNAUGHT: What year was this? MR. DRAPER: Oh, 1960 I would say, 1964. It's had for me to remember. I went out there and in arriving at the house -- a lot of things about Dr. Mayo. When I came in it was Sunday afternoon and they were all -- he had about 11 children from the ages of -- seven were adopted from his brother who died -- 17 to 30 or 33 and they were all doing the Conga around, there was Conga music. I heard this Conga music and nobody answered the door. So I opened the door and walked in and saw them. And he yelled, "Join the line, Bill." So I put down my bags and Congaed around with them. MR. MCNAUGHT: This was in his house? MR. DRAPER: In his house. I wasn't introduced to anybody, just get at the end of the line and Conga. Well, that's sort of crazy. Then that night I sang a Tom Lehrer song called "Be Prepared." It was the Boy Scouts' marching song "Be Prepared", "Be prepared. That's the Boy Scout's marching song. As through life you march along. Be prepared to hold your liquor very well. Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't spell," and that type thing. He had an organ there and I played the organ. The next day I went down to see an operation he was doing on a gall bladder, to take the lady's gall bladder out. She weighed I think 300 pounds and he said you've got to get down some weight and come back in six months. Well, she had lost 40 pounds but he couldn't see any difference. I was up in the balcony and this woman was brought in. He had on a blue operating coat, sort of light greenish-blue, which he invented. He starts to slice her open and I saw these layers of sort of yellow white fat. He cut deeper and deeper and then he cut about four inches deep and then he suddenly said to the nurse, "Bring the larger retractors sterilized." Then he had to get the six-inch retractors. Then when he did he looked up at me and said, "Be prepared," which was very thoughtful right in the middle of the operation to remember be prepared and look up because he was unprepared you see. And then -- what's the matter? [Audio Break.] MR. MCNAUGHT: Did you end up doing a portrait of him and his father as well? MR. DRAPER: Yeah, I did. But painting him he wanted to be standing in his robe not in his operating clothes. The thing I found the most difficult of all, he was standing by a tub in the picture, in the hospital with one glove, rubber glove, as if he had been operating. I did it in his house you see leaning against a very beautiful carved Italian oak table, which was -- and I had the worst time. I would go down and look in the hospital and draw a sink and I had to paint the sink back in the house. That was the hardest thing, to make the white sink look like a sink and not like a piece of foam rubber, you know. I finally got that. Then when I was working on it every night, it was in the living room, we would do the Conga line and everybody would -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Every night? MR. DRAPER: Every -- all the kids and myself and painting the picture and they would dance by. But they were -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Why did the family have a Conga line every night? MR. DRAPER: Because they loved to Conga. They loved to dance. So we would go around, dancing around the picture with a brush and paint it. They would also -- there was paint somewhere where I had been painting. You see it didn't hurt anything. Then Dr. Mayo suddenly took a lot of -- went up in a place where I had painted and made sort of a squiggle and he said that's the umbilical cord and I left it there. It's in the painting today. It's sort of a wiggle of brown. It's over to the left. It looks very -- well, he did it. That made it a lot of fun. He was so proud of his umbilical cord. MR. MCNAUGHT: Is it hanging in his house or at the Mayo Clinic? MR. DRAPER: At the Mayo Clinic. I painted a Dr. Priestly out there who I met when I went out to paint Dr. Mayo. MR. MCNAUGHT: On the Conga line. MR. DRAPER: And he was out there at the time and I thought he was older than God, Dr. Priestly, because I couldn't -- I didn't know him well. He was a great friend of Chuck Mayo's. But they would talk differently and he sort of made me uneasy and I thought he was so old. Then the next year when he was a year older, two years older, he commissioned me to come out and paint him. Then I got to know him very well and through the week he got younger and younger and younger. You see, isn't it funny, you get to know somebody and they change. MR. MCNAUGHT: Absolutely. What about -- MR. DRAPER: I told you about the Shah, didn't I, holding -- MR. MCNAUGHT: No, we haven't spoken yet about the Shah, which I think is very interesting. You painted him recently, in 1970 or so. MR. DRAPER: I painted him for his coronation, which was in '69. MR. MCNAUGHT: Sixty-nine. MR. DRAPER: Yeah, I believe that's the date. I went over there to paint him, to Iran, to Tehran, with my wife. Yes, it was before we divorced so it might have been '67 even when I think of it. Well, anyway, the time of his coronation. MR. MCNAUGHT: Had you been to Persia before? MR. DRAPER: Never, no. And he had seen a picture I had done of President Kennedy and I think that's why -- MR. MCNAUGHT: Is that why he asked for you? MR. DRAPER: I think so, yes. MR. MCNAUGHT: Did he do it through the Iranian Embassy here or did he contact you? MR. DRAPER: Through the Iranian Embassy and he didn't do it at all. It was the Bank of Iran who were giving him a gift. MR. MCNAUGHT: Oh, they commissioned it? MR. DRAPER: For the coronation, so they commissioned it. MR. MCNAUGHT: I see. MR. DRAPER: So unfortunately I was never a pal of his. He didn't -- I mean, that way. I was a hired hand coming to Iran to paint him so he would pose every other morning. I know I tried very hard to get -- so he would ask me for lunch and so we would be friends when I was painting him. I would say, "Did you ever know my aunt, Princess Vunkenpatty?" No, he didn't know her. Then I had a brother-in-law who was the Earl of Gossford [phonetic]. He used to be a pilot when he was at Funkingall [phonetic] and the Shah was a pilot so I thought maybe they might have known. So I said, "Do you know my brother-in-law, John Gossford, the Earl of Gossford?" "No." Then I had an old roommate, Alessandre Tolanio [phonetic] at Pomfret who was Price Alessandre Tolanio who had married the King of Spain's daughter, Infanta Beatrice. So I thought, oh, this is going to get me in so I'll be no longer a hired hand. And I said, "Do you know my old roommate, Alessandre Tolanio?" "No, I never heard of him." So that really -- so I was still a hired hand. Then when I got back, a month later, I saw my nephew Chuck who married my brother Harry's daughter Heidi. He said, "Oh, Uncle Bill, why in the world didn't you let me know you were going to Tehran. I roomed with the Shah's nephew, Shiran, all through Rose School at Harvard and he's one of my best friends." MR. MCNAUGHT: Oh, no. MR. DRAPER: And he had a palace there. I could have told the Shah, well, do you know Shiran. My nephew and your nephew roomed together. That would have gotten me for lunch. I finally did tell them that later on when I was invited to the White House by Johnson at a dinner for the Shah. I then told him my nephew and your nephew were roommates at Rose School at Harvard. He said, "Oh, really, you know." It was a little late then. MR. MCNAUGHT: How long did he pose, how often? MR. DRAPER: Well, he posed every other day for an house. He kept the English ambassador waiting a couple of times because he would pose an hour-and-a-half. I got along with him very well. I know when we first came in I had -- I had him sit down in this chair and he said, "Oh, no, I'm not going to sit down." He had on his uniform with his medals and he said, "This is the way I will be," and he stood in sort of ballet fifth position with his feet and his hand on the back of the chair looking like Edward, you know, the king. [Interruption to proceeding.] MR. DRAPER: The Shah was telling -- when the telephone rang it interrupted me. He was standing by this chair and he said, "This is the way I will be painted." Well, of course it was a great pose so I painted him just that way. As he stood there I was -- he had a very good build at the time. He looks a little -- he's aged an awful lot in the last four years I would say, but he had -- he looked as if he were pumping iron you know. MR. MCNAUGHT: Really? MR. DRAPER: I mean, he had, you know, that Pumping Iron movie. He looked like a weight lifter because he had very big arms and he was quite short. He was about 5'8" or less. MR. MCNAUGHT: Oh, really? MR. DRAPER: And short arms but very wide. So I was measuring by comparing the length to the width and I said, "You have very" -- he said, "What's your trouble?" And I said, "You have such big arms." He said, "Oh, yes, very big. Do you want to feel them?" So I came over and he tightened his arm up like that and I felt this big muscle. Then I looked at him and I said, "And you have such a small waist, Your Majesty." And he said, "Oh, yes, very small. But you should have seen it a few years ago." He was very pleased with himself and his figure, you know, and I don't blame him. I would have been too. MR. MCNAUGHT: How interesting. So in other words he was a pleasant man? MR. DRAPER: Oh, very pleasant. And the first day I had given him this -- my wife had suggested, Barbara had said -- you see my -- this all came out in the war. I think I've told -- the National Geographic had bought issues, did I tell you that? MR. MCNAUGHT: Yes. MR. DRAPER: And this was the August issue of painting history in the Pacific, on the Aleutians that I had, but the article before that was Iran in wartime. So I decided that I would have the book bound, beautifully bound and present it to the Shah, not really realizing when I looked at it later it -- I just thought Iran in wartime would be great and then I would have my pictures there which were 16 pages of full color of my paintings. So we had it bound and not going through official channels. I just thought, well, I'll just give it to him on the first day he posed. So he came in to pose and I said, "Oh, Your Majesty, I have a gift for you." He took it and I think I should have done it through the channels. He opened it up and looked and saw Iran in Wartime and read that for about five minutes, looking through, not looking very pleased because later on I realized it said that his father had been pro-German and that finally England and America had taken the father out somewhere and put him in because he was pro-American. That was sort of what it was all about. Then the next article right at the end of Iran was mine, Painting History in the Pacific." He got to the end of that and slammed the book and said, "Time to pose." I wanted to say, oh, but Your Majesty, right on the next page is me, me, me. I've got 16 pages of full color. Well, he never saw those and I was so in awe of him anyway. So when the sitting was over he started to walk out of the room and I said, "Oh, Your Majesty, you've forgotten the book." So I ran over and gave him the book and he strode out with the book and he probably gave it to a valet. I don't know what happened. I never brought it up later on that I had done these things, that he had the book. I should have but I forgot all about it. I painted him in the banquet hall. There were six or eight windows, big, large studio windows all the way down this long, long room and he just -- we had just one big screen put, cutting out the rest of the banquet hall. Marvelous chandeliers and the walls were inlaid with mirror, little mirrors. MR. MCNAUGHT: Very Persian. MR. DRAPER: It was beautiful really. MR. MCNAUGHT: And was he pleased with the painting? MR. DRAPER: Oh, very, yes. MR. MCNAUGHT: Good. MR. DRAPER: As far as I know. MR. MCNAUGHT: And were you pleased? MR. DRAPER: Oh, I think it's one of the best things I've done. MR. MCNAUGHT: Good. And where does it hang now? MR. DRAPER: In the palace. MR. MCNAUGHT: In the palace? MR. DRAPER: Yeah. And -- lift your head -- [Audio Break.] MR. MCNAUGHT: So you painted the Shah of Iran. The most famous head of state probably that you've painted was John F. Kennedy. MR. DRAPER: Well, today I think the Shah of Iran is just as -- well, I guess he was. Well, I painted Kennedy -- I'll tell you how it happened. It's very interesting. In the first place I get a call from George Bundy in Washington asking me if I would come to Washington to see the President. MR. MCNAUGHT: Did you know George Bundy? MR. DRAPER: I didn't know George Bundy. I've met him since and he was at Harvard in a couple of classes around my time but I never knew him. I've known many friends of his who are friends of mine. But I got this call to come down, that the President wanted to talk to me about painting his father. Evidently the old man, old Ambassador Kennedy, had never been painted because he was not very popular at the time and never had a picture hanging in the embassy here. Well, then the President became President and they suddenly though, oh, my God, there's no picture of his father in the embassy and if he ever -- MR. MCNAUGHT: The embassy in -- MR. DRAPER: In London. MR. MCNAUGHT: Yeah. MR. DRAPER: And David Bruce suddenly felt there better be a picture of him. So they talked to Johnny Walker who was head of the National Academy -- I mean, the National Gallery in Washington and he recommended me to do it because he knew I painted very fast I suppose because I only take usually a week but they have to pose a lot. And so I was commissioned to paint him and I was supposed to talk to the President about his father and then go down to Palm Beach to see him. By that time he had a stroke. MR. MCNAUGHT: He had had the stroke, okay. MR. DRAPER: He had a stroke. And then a little history before, I had known President Kennedy years ago. I grew up in Hyannis Port. MR. MCNAUGHT: At the same time the Kennedys were growing up there? MR. DRAPER: Well, the Kennedys were there, yeah. MR. MCNAUGHT: So you knew the whole family? MR. DRAPER: I know old Joe Kennedy. I never saw much of Rose. She was sort of in the background. She wasn't as much in the foreground as she is today. I knew -- the ones I knew best were Joe and Kathleen. They were my age. Joe was maybe -- Kathleen I guess was my age and Joe was a little younger than I am. Jack was about five years younger than I am and my brother Harry knew him better. Harry was only two years older. But we all played together and we used to sail. One time when I was about 12 and Harry -- maybe Harry was 10 and Jack was 8, or maybe I was 14, about that time, we were sailing, Joe and Jack and Harry myself out in Hyannis Port Harbor. Suddenly this amphibious plane came in and landed. They said, "Oh, that's Gloria Swanson coming to visit Daddy." And I said, "Oh, goody. I'm going to meet Gloria Swanson." So we went into the dock and ran over to the Kennedy's house and I met Gloria Swanson in 1928 I think -- MR. MCNAUGHT: How exciting. MR. DRAPER: -- at the height of her career. I've met her since but I've never said, oh, I met you in 1928 when you came to visit Ambassador Kennedy at Joe Kennedy's. I don't know how -- I mean, evidently it was very well known they were having an affair I think. I don't know how Rose felt about her coming to visit in Hyannis Port. But he was the had of Fox Booking then or one of the big people there. So I've known the President and he was in the same club at Harvard, but he was five years younger so I didn't know him at Harvard but going away in the Speed Club he would be there when I would go in for mid-year dinner after I had graduated, you know. I would see Jack and I knew him fairly well obviously because I've known him all my life. MR. MCNAUGHT: You had -- because you used to spend summers -- MR. DRAPER: As we got older I think the family, we had the Kennedys come over one time for cocktails and we sort of introduced them to Hyannis Port society. This sounds awfully snobbish but it's perfectly true because nobody knew the Kennedys. Momma and Pappa Kennedy, they were in the golf club but nobody knew them. Even when he was ambassador to England Mrs. Hayward and mother and father, they went -- they just weren't the in because I suppose they thought they were Boston Catholic Irish you see which is very funny but that's the way it was in those days. They were Democrats and everybody else was a Republican, you know. But they kept to themselves. MR. MCNAUGHT: That all mattered. MR. DRAPER: Evidently it must have then. I like them all and the kids, we kids played together. Then I didn't see much of Jack at all you see. Then when I went down to Palm Beach to paint Ambassador Kennedy I -- oh, I'll tell you before this Alex Williams who was one of the Speed, graduates of the Speed Club -- I mean, graduate of Harvard and was in the Speed -- now Dylan was in it too. He was in that. So Alex said, "Bill, would you ever paint pictures of the president for the Speed Club? We would love to have it and we can pretend it's a commission. We won't pay you but you could do it for us." And I said, "Fine, if you can arrange it, Alex, I'll be glad to paint the President," hoping he would. And he said, "I'll write Dylan a letter. Maybe Doug can do something about it." I had painted Doug Dylan anyway when he was -- for the embassy in Paris and it's hanging there today. But nobody got to Doug Dylan evidently. I got down there first to Palm Beach and when I saw the President I saw his father was in a wheelchair. He would laugh when he was supposed to cry and vice-a-versa. Everything sort of -- just his mind wasn't right. MR. MCNAUGHT: Really? MR. DRAPER: And I was supposed to do color sketches of him. So Ann -- what was her name, Logan, not Logan -- Ann Garland [phonetic] who was a cousin of Kennedy was taking care of him. She said, "Now when Ambassador Kennedy drops his foot" -- he was paralyzed you see -- "around this room that's where he'll sit and you can paint him there, make some color notes." I had my easel set up and the canvas and they wheeled him out and he was -- he looked terrible but he didn't drop his foot. They wheeled him round and round this room and they finally said he's not going to drop his foot. He won't pose. So they started wheeling him back up the hall. When he was about eight feet behind my canvas he dropped his foot off. So they turned around and he was eight feet behind me looking at the canvas. So then I tried for half an hour to paint him from behind me, and I still have the sketch, which I would love to give to the National Portrait Gallery, but I also would want to get a deduction. All I can get is $20 so I'm keeping it. I think I can sell it for a lot more than that. But I did the sketch of him, leaving out while he was watching -- I didn't want to show the drawn look of his face but obviously a half hour sketch of Ambassador Kennedy was -- he was downhill I would say, but you could barley recognize him, very thin. And so I did that over the weekend and I showed this to Jack. Now Jack of course I had to call him Mr. President. MR. MCNAUGHT: Had you reestablished your acquaintance at this time? MR. DRAPER: No, when I went to Washington -- MR. MCNAUGHT: I mean, he remembered you? MR. DRAPER: When I went to Washington I was supposed to -- oh, yes, he remembered me. But Mrs. Lincoln said, "Now remember, Mr. Draper, he's not Jack and you can't call him Jack. It's Mr. President," which of course is true but I would think when we relaxed in the President's office, which was probably bugged, that he probably -- it was just Mr. President all the time and he was very formal. "Bill," he would call me Bill, but he was rather formal. He would come down and he would go, fly down to -- and I was supposed to fly down with Jackie and with the family in the Columbine I think it was called. But at last I had come to Washington. At the last minute I got word to get out to the airport to go on the first plane, which is a sister ship of the Columbine, with Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln and a couple of other secretaries and a cook and a valet and not with the family. I arrived and was put up at a hotel with Mrs. Lincoln nearby. Then I went over to see the father. Then when I had done this picture as I told you -- Session 4 HOME |
