Art: Painter Chandor

Commissioned by TIME to paint the Hoover Cabinet, the first panel of which is published this week (see front cover), Painter Douglas Chandor of London, Manhattan, Philadelphia, Detroit and Washington, D. C. is like Author Chesterton’s Noah—everything “on the largest scale;” that is, in the grand manner.

Now 32, he emerged from art school in 1921. Before the year was out, Queen Mary had visited a London gallery to gaze upon the first oil portrait her eldest son had sat for since childhood. King George called Painter Chandor to him to say it was an excellent likeness. The Prince was so pleased he had Painter Chandor do him again, with arms folded, reflective, in his study at St. James’s Palace. Also in 1921, his first year out of art school, Painter Chandor had his portrait of Sir Edward Marshall Hall “on the line” at the Royal Academy.

In 1924, all Britain’s prime ministers were assembled in London for the Empire Exhibition at Wembley. Not without much shrewd wangling and entirely “on his own,” Painter Chandor got them all to sit together for a monster canvas which, when finished, was given a place of honor in the Government’s pavilion at Wembley and later hung permanently in the Colonial Office. This piece of work entrenched Painter Chandor, at 27, in the very front rank of his profession.

He headed for the U. S. in 1926, in a steamer cabin next to the suite occupied by Queen Marie of Rumania, whom he had begun to paint in Paris. He finished her commission after landing andproceeded, with introductions from Sir Joseph Duveen, to accommodate alert Manhattanites. In Philadelphia he painted Mrs. E. T. Stotesbury and all six of the A. Atwater Kents. He went to Detroit to paint Col. Lindbergh at the behest of Edsel Ford, who wanted to give the portrait to the city. But Col. Lindbergh backed out of the engagement lest all U. S. cities make similar demands on his time. In his large Book-Cadillac studio-suite, Painter Chandor stayed at Detroit, painting the prosperous, until last spring when TIME gave him his Hoover Cabinet commission, when he moved to Washington. This project is now half-finished, with the President, Vice President, the Secretaries of State and the Navy, the Attorney-General and Postmaster-General yet to sit.

The Cabinet men whom he has so far studied, he particularizes as follows from an artist’s viewpoint:

Most human and imaginative—Secretary Lament.

Most amusing and unusual—Secretary Wilbur.

Most formidable—Attorney-Genera1 Mitchell.

Most jovial—Secretary Good.

Most sensitive and, of course, shy— Secretary Mellon.

Most abrupt—Secretary Adams.

Best sitters—Secretaries Lamont and Good.

Best head for a picture—Secretary Davis.

Like most painters, Painter Chandor prefers men to women as subjects. “It’s an awful strain to paint women. They must constantly be amused,” he says. For women who interest him as subjects he designs clothes. Women with whose ideas about posing themselves he takes issue, should feel flattered rather than other-wise. They are “worth bothering about.” Of necessity an ethnologist and character-reader of sorts, he says dark-haired people have more depth of character than light-haired and make better subjects psychologically as well as pictorially. Beauty attracts him less than “interesting” faces. Says he: “One’s great-grandchildren will be much more likely to stop and look at an old portrait on the stairs if it moves them to say ‘What an interesting old girl she must have been,’ than if it is just a pretty face. Charm lies in character.”

Of the Chandor work, Sir Joseph Duveen has written: “What his portraits reveal is the impression of personal dignity coupled always with charm. The material likeness is there, presented by a sound craftsman; but above all, there is the caste and character discerned by the artist whose eyes are always open to the poetic and imaginative values of his subject.

“These are the ultra violet rays, as it were, of the painter’s spectrum, and the artist who, like Mr. Chandor, is not blind to them presents a genuine and sincere portrait rather than a mere likeness.”

Painter Chandor’s grandfather was Count Laszlo Chandor of Hungary, kin by marriage of the great Prince Metternich. His mother was an Irishwoman. Raised in England and at heart an Englishman, he, like many another young gentleman, considered it more sporting to go into the War as a “Tommy” in the ranks than to get a commission. After he came out, the tailstroke of what had smashed him up “a bit,” smashed his family’s fortunes. Instead of grubbing along or “going out” to the U. S. or Canada, he squared off at life, determined to develop his strongest talent. His chief teacher was Professor Henry Tonks, master of Augustus John and Sir William Orpen, at London’s famed Slade School. When he considers himself perfected in portraiture, he proposes to settle down with his wife and daughter in Sussex and paint what most artists love best, landscapes.