Portraits from the Collection

Alice Neel was an American painter known for her Expressionistic portraits of her friends, family, and lovers. Her dynamic use of color and line captured the interior emotional life of her sitters, lending a psychological weight to her subject matter rather than just a likeness of the model. “Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overwhelming interest in humanity,” she explained. “Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.” Born on January 28, 1900 in Merion Square, PA, she was brought up in a strict middle class family. They did not support her decision to become an artist. Nevertheless, Neel went on to study at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in 1921. Losing her infant daughter to disease following her move from Cuba to New York with her husband traumatically altered her life and outlook, setting the precedent for her work’s latent focus on motherhood, loss, and anxiety. She died on October 13, 1984 in New York, NY. Neel’s works are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among many others.