Black Draftee (James Hunter)
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.Neel’s portraits reflect the different communities of Manhattan, where she lived and worked, as well as her strong left-wing social consciousness. In 1965, the year Lyndon B. Johnson decided on a radical increase of ground forces in South Vietnam, Neel met James Hunter by chance and asked him to sit for a portrait. The young man had just been drafted for the Vietnam War and was scheduled to leave within a week. Following her usual practice, Neel started to outline the body directly on the canvas and then filled in parts of the head and hands. When Hunter did not return for their second sitting, Neel declared the work complete in its unfinished state by signing it on the back. The portrait was first shown at the retrospective of the artist’s work held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974.
Artwork Details
- Title: Black Draftee (James Hunter)
- Artist: Alice Neel (American, Merion Square, Pennsylvania 1900–1984 New York)
- Date: 1965
- Geography: Country of Origin USA
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 60 × 40 in. (152.4 × 101.6 cm)
Framed: 69 3/8 × 49 1/2 × 3 9/16 in. (176.2 × 125.7 × 9 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: COMMA Foundation, Belgium
- Rights and Reproduction: © The Estate of Alice Neel
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art