Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942)
Oil on canvas, c1920
Gift of the Partnership for New York City, Inc.
NYSM 2003.41.44

By his own description, Charles Hitchcock Sherrill lived an “over-crowded worried life.” Mercurial and brilliant, Sherrill was a champion athlete at Yale, a successful New York City lawyer, an internationally recognized expert on stained glass windows in European cathedrals, the author of twenty-two books, a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army during World War I, and U.S. Ambassador to Argentina and Turkey. From 1922 until his death he was a pivotal member of the International Olympic Committee. Conflicts regarding compromise or boycott of the so-called “Nazi Olympics” in Berlin possibly contributed to his fatal heart attack on the eve of the games in the summer of 1936.

Regarding her selective approach to commissions, Cecilia Beaux once observed, “It doesn’t pay to paint everybody.” Less prolific than some and more highly regarded than most, Beaux enjoyed a successful career, her sitters drawn from the fields of academia, religion, business, politics, and high society. In her lifetime she was considered to be the artistic equal of John Singer Sargent. Her portrait of Charles Sherrill was painted about the time she produced several portraits of eminent leaders for the U.S. War Portraits Commission.