William Franklin Draper (American, 1912-2003). Oil on canvas, ca. 1970. Signed "Wm. F. Draper" on lower right. A lovely plein-air painting of a ruby red flowering plant, possibly a poinsettia, by American artist William Draper. The plant is growing outdoors in front of a clay garden or house wall - the blooms and spring green leaves delineated with Draper's loose brushstrokes - and a distant landscape is visible beyond the wall. The composition demonstrates Draper's embrace of modernist sensibilities, with the plant dramatically brought right up to the picture plane and the distant almost Surrealist landscape. According to William Draper's family, this scene was painted on site, either in Ecuador or Mexico where wild poinsettias are indigenous. A beautiful painting set in an attractive custom frame with a brass plaque at he lower end that is engraved with the artist's name. Size (canvas): 33.375" W x 39.375" H (84.8 cm x 100 cm); (interior frame): 37.875" W x 43.8" H (96.2 cm x 111.3 cm); (exterior frame): 42.75" W x 48.7" H (108.6 cm x 123.7 cm)

Interestingly, the Aztecs traditionally used the poinsettia plant to create red dye and as an antipyretic (fever reducing) medication. In Nahuatl, the Aztec language, the poinsettia plant is called "Cuetlaxochitl" which literally means "flower that grows in residues of soil". In present day Mexico and Guatemala, the plant is known as "Flor de Nochebuena" or the Christmas Eve flower, while in Spain the poinsettia is known as "Flor de Pascua" meaning Easter flower, and In Peru and Chile, this plant is called the Crown of the Andes.

William Draper's career spanned seven decades and his subjects included a portrait of John F. Kennedy that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. based upon an oil sketch for which the president sat in 1962. Draper was actually the only artist who painted JFK from life. Draper showed at Knoedler, the Graham Gallery, Portraits, Inc., the Far Gallery, The Findlay Galleries (New York, NY) and the Robert C. Vose Galleries (Boston, MA). His work has been included in shows at the National Portrait Gallery and the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), The National Academy of Design (New York, NY), The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, (Boston, MA) the Fogg Art Museum, (one of the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA), the National Gallery, (London), Salon de la Marine (Paris) and in museums in Australia. He also taught at the Art Students League of New York, and received a lifetime achievement award from the Portrait Society of America in 1999.

More on the artist's background: William Franklin Draper was born in Hopedale, Massachusetts on December 24, 1912. A child prodigy, he studied classical piano at Harvard University. He later changed his focus to fine art and studied with Charles Webster Hawthorne and Henry Hensche in Provincetown, Rhode Island. Draper also attended the National Academy of Design in New York and the Cape Cod School of Art in Massachusetts. Then he traveled to Spain and studied with Harry Zimmerman, moved on to France and attended the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. In 1937, he moved to Boston to study sculpture with George Demetrius and also studied with Jon Corbino in beautiful Rockport, Massachusetts. In 1942, Draper joined the Navy and served as a combat artist when stationed on the Aleutian Islands and in the South Pacific. He observed and painted battle scenes on Bougainville, Guam, Saipan, and other locations, as well as genre scenes of soldiers who were not engaged in combat but rather at work and at play. National Geographic magazine reproduced 25 of his war images in four issues in 1944. In 1945, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. organized a group exhibition of works by five official war artists, including Draper. That same year the Metropolitan Museum of Art included Draper in an exhibition entitled, ''The War Against Japan.'' Draper was also featured in a PBS television show about combat artists entitled, "They Drew Fire" in May of 2000. After the war, Draper opened a studio on Park Avenue in New York City and continued to not only paint, but also play classical and jazz piano.

Provenance: The William F. Draper Collection, New York City, USA, acquired via descent from the late William Franklin Draper (1912-2003), an accomplished American artist whose career spanned seven decades. Known as the "Dean of American Portraiture," William Draper was the only artist to paint President John F. Kennedy from life, and his oeuvre includes marvelous landscapes from his world travels, military paintings as he was one of only seventeen Combat Artists in WWII, and portraits of illustrious individuals.

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#152826

Signed "Wm. F. Draper" on lower right. Draper Estate stamp on verso. Only minor age wear, otherwise excellent. Wired for suspension.