Alice Neel and Me Author(s): Mary D. Garrard Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Fall - Winter, 2006), pp. 3-7 Published by: Old City Publishing, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20358083 . Accessed: 30/12/2013 17:41 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Old City Publishing, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Woman's Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 198.91.32.137 on Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:41:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ISSUES AND PORTRAITS, and Neel Alice INSIGHTS Me By Mary D. Garrard the winter of 1977, Alice Neel painted me (front cover). I came to her apartment and studio on West 107th When In Street inNew York, Iwalked in the door, fresh from the cold, snowy street, and before I could take off my coat and hat, she said, "Stop, Iwant to paint you just like that." But Iwas not one of Neel's victims?the chosen of two convergence came portrait about as a and Norma Schoettler Ellouise Sherman, as I At that time, knew Norma only another WCA art had recently leader who joined my university's department. We began our life together as collaborators and Claire partners soon after the Neel portrait was painted. In the larger theater of feminist activism, Norma and I had come to know a lot of artists and other feminists who would become nationally One of them was Alice Neel (1900-84), newly prominent. famous but grandly so. Two years later, she would be honored at President Jimmy Carter's White House, along with Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), Selma Burke (1900-95), Isabel Bishop Louise (1902-88), (b. 1911), and Georgia O'Keeffe Bourgeois (1887-1986), in the WCA's first annual awards ceremony. The White House event was instigated by Ellouise Schoettler and Norma Broude, and carried out by Judy Brodsky, my successor asWCA president, and Washington artist Charlotte Robinson. I first met Neel at a party at Charlotte Robinson's house in Falls Church, Virginia. As I sat talking to her, awicked thought came into my head?and this is the second factor. For years, to have my portrait painted. She had wanted my mother leave it to me to find a would pay for it, she said, but would that no suitable artist. For years, I had demurred, protesting be she modern artists just as good painted portraits?wouldn't a even I nice nice had resisted the with happy photograph? photograph, was because something like I feared this Alice. Here was an artist who had for decades portraits that were both realist and modernist. picture that what my mother of me as a sixteen-year wanted old Southern debutante (Fig. 1). Iwas socially constructed to look I knew at the time without like that, of course?something the words to explain it. Inside, I still imagined myself more like I looked in an early scrapbook photo (Fig. 2), a pre-feminme person, natural and uninhibited. The point is that when Alice Neel painted me, at age forty, I had no viable adult self-image. Between the imposed artificial Southern femininity, which as a nature of my identity distorted the more complex as a I led and life the inchoate southerner, currently visually university professor and urban feminist lay unfathomed parts of me. But having found no way to reconcile where I came from I asked. commissions?" "Oh, she yes," been painting "Do you take and said, a named price, for me was modest to propose to the patron, enough Lucile Clark Garrard. My poor mother didn't know what she was in for, but she trusted me, and the project was set. which factors. In 1977,1 was just ending my term as the second president of Women's Caucus for Art (WCA), the national organization in the visual arts.1 In a photograph of an early of women I am accompanied by WCA officers Diane conference meeting Russell, Broude. I had become, I simply could not imagine a portrait that would not falsify at least half my identity. The portrait project was cold on the back burner until Imet with what she first saw the portrait, my mother hated it. For a long time, Norma was the only one who liked it, recognizing In her book in itwhat she calls my intensity and centeredness. on Alice Neel, Pamela Aliara labeled this image "the militant feminist activist," and perhaps that's what my mother saw in it too. I think in time she would have come to understand it, When because she would surely have been a feminist if she'd known how. Indeed, the very idea of her requesting my portrait might be counted a feminist gesture because, I realized much later, to offset my father's board-room style she might have wanted in their living room. But as it happened, my portrait hanging would mother she was when as about become ill and die within a year, at a moment as troubled about what Iwas doing with my life the portrait. of the 1970s demonstrate, such as one I didn't look showing Lucy Lippard picketing at theWhitney, different from others in my world. Alice Neel saw me in the uniform of the day, and, ever alert to the fit and misfit between individuals and types, said, "Iwant to paint you like that." and studio assistant, took me her daughter-in-law Neel, Nancy As photographs aside and you know. you want." whispered, Since this art The "You don't to wear have is a commission, historian you in me coat the can have took only and hat, it however an instant to respond: "Iwant her to do her own idea. Iwant an Alice Neel." set the Whatever that turned out to be, at least it would to rest. debutante As would she painted, Alice carried on a dramatic raise topics for conversation, door-slamming pronouncements monologue. She only to close them off with of her own firm I convictions. I could quote the marvelous bon mots that flew by, the I and acerbic but unfortunately remarks, witty throwaway I assumed I'd didn't write any of them down afterward. remember them forever, just as I assumed that that magical wish moment in time would last forever: 1970s America, when new seemed astounding possible forwomen. There were things to four three four hours each. We'd break for sessions, perhaps hot lunch in the kitchen, where Nancy provided wonderful in bread and of cheese. with chunks Then, soup earthy mugs, to paint, talking back to the studio, where Alice continued FALL/WINTER 2006 O This content downloaded from 198.91.32.137 on Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:41:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lady Troubridge (1924; Fig. 3). There is even a resemblance of style, in the satirical use of caricature, and the combination of a realism with modernist flattening. Much of bright, hard-edged Alice's imagery is intertextual, and plays knowingly with art the history. Along with Sylvia Sleigh (b. 1916), she pioneered inversion of gender categories: in her nude portrait of the art curator and critic John Perreault (1972), she depicted a gay man as an odalisque, invoking the long tradition of sexy female nudes like Goya's Naked Maja (1800). Perreault's dreamy passivity and lovingly detailed genitalia are meant to be understood as a send effective a comic role reversal as Linda up of the type?as Fig. 2. Mary Garrard, Nochlin's famous photograph of the Vassar College studio model she posed and photographed with bananas, playing off images of nude women with round fruit thatwere ubiquitous in art history.2 and another leading When Neel portrayed Linda Nochlin feminist art historian, Ann Sutherland Harris, she chose to show each accompanied by her child, Harris with her son Neil, and Nochlin with daughter Daisy (1973; PL 2). Here again Neel was about age 3, Indianola, Mississippi. Fig. 1.Mary Garrard, 16, age Delta. Mississippi incessantly. She did this partly to draw her sitters out on she knew they cared about, or to provoke reactions. But she also wanted to keep her conscious mind engaged in that the artistic subconscious could do itswork. Neel's particular gambit was to discover and expose topics I think talk so in her sitters the very things they would rather keep private. Evidently, she asked lots of sitters in the sixties and seventies if she could them paint some nude; some agreed, didn't. said She itwas a test of wills, hers versus the sitter's. Cindy Nemser, the founder and editor of the Feminist Art Journal, amajor publication of the 1970s (along with her very supportive husband Chuck) (1975; PL 1) must have thought she could take it, and I thought she was very brave. When Alice asked if she could paint me in the coat and hat, itmay have been a test, on the order of being asked to pose nude. But nudity as Neel painted it?as many artists paint it?is not particularly personal. Would you recognize this woman from her is effectively a mask, because it conceals body alone? Nudity social identity. Being depicted in your own clothes makes you more it exposes because vulnerable, your choices. identity Early in the first sitting, Alice asked me if Iwere a lesbian. It was the first time, and perhaps the last, I had been directly quizzed about a sexual identity I embraced some twenty years earlier, Aliara and itmade me commented on quite its uneasy. guarded Describing nature, my my portrait, Pam of protection privacy. If I appear guarded, thatwas probably the reason. In one sense, Alice protected my right to that defensiveness by painting it.Yet she got at me through a backdoor reference. Itwas Norma Broude who first observed my portrait's resemblance toMatisse's 1906 Young Sailor?an analogy that for Alice may have preceded any idea of the feminist activist. My navy blue pea jacket and cap would have history-savvy She probably up Matisse's summoned famous Neel, and?style apart?the on it relevant considered to the art painting analogy several is levels, striking. cross gendered allusion being the foremost. Where gender was concerned, Alice Neel liked tomix things up. The element of androgyny, visible inmy portrait and others in her oeuvre, portrait to my brings of her flamboyant, mind Romaine cross-dressing Brooks's lesbian well friend, known Una, this case, playing against type by showing mixing things up?in an arch feminist as mother. Yet her intent may have gone as well to show feminists kind wish beyond an atypically rounded people. Daisy's pose replicates Linda's; her left arm and hand mimic her mother's gesture, bringing to mind Mary Cassatt's (1844-1926) portrait of amother and child who are also and red-haired the color where blond, is also yellow and central, linked gestures also connect mother and daughter (c. 1905; Fig. 4). Cassatt uses amirror to evoke the future; inNeel's portrait, it is Daisy's hopeful face. Yet Alice astutely contrasts Daisy's and energy innocence with her face is open where Linda's expectancy, her mother's crossed tempered experience? iswary; her dangling Linda's convey legs mature legs signal self-protection. and its continuity portrait speaks of generational as to and its feminism revitalization?surely applicable as to individual families. generational legacy A photograph from the 1980 WCA conference captures the sense of generational continuity that was the pride and hope of feminists. Alice Neel and the influential museum second-wave The curator Adelyn Breeskin are the elders, greeted respectfully by feminist icon Miriam Schapiro, some twenty-five years younger. In the background, than Schapiro, I fourteen years younger represent a third virtually A generation. scant decade earlier, Schapiro and Judy Chicago had broken the ice at Womanhouse, their now legendary experimental collaborative creation with their students at Cal Arts, which put feminist art on the national map. A photograph of that group includes a very young Mira Schor, an active feminist artist and writer (also a contributor to the Alice Neel symposium and to the essays in this issue). We believed that the next would generation on our carry feminist agenda, and Mira is a shining example of those who did. But some members Womanhouse project, like many other American women, now of the live "postfeminist" lives, content with the gains of a half-completed revolution. What we did not know then, in our optimistic expectation of a brave new world, is that feminist movements have never yet Alice Neel's lasted two consecutive own relationship on, she generations. to the feminist movement became its poster complicated. Early notably when her portrait of Kate Millett was child?most on the August 1970 WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL o This content downloaded from 198.91.32.137 on Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:41:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions cover of Time magazine nation. Neel a hero, gave to the movement the women's heralded the movement as someone acted who out feminism but didn't necessarily speak out for it. Yet itwas that "discovered" her, and launched her the feminist movement career. She became known to many of us at the first national on women conference of Art School the vast when moment, in the visual arts, nationwide at held the Corcoran 1972. Itwas in April inWashington, feminist a catalytic was movement in taken by Ruth Ward catch formation. Wonderful photographs the spirit of that moment. Judy Chicago was there, fresh from the triumph of Womanhouse. Linda Nochlin spoke, and June outdoor gave Wayne seminars. women Middle-aged caucused far the largest cohort and planned, while young women?by lives. One of those was and their changed present?listened Arlene Raven?now left deceased?who recently the East Coast for California on the spot, to launch her rich career as feminist critic and activist. Sometime the during a conference, seventy-two-year-old woman few there had heard of took the podium, armed with carousels, and started showing slides of her work. She would not stop, hungry for attention, and with some forty years of her to an audience that would listen. She went story to tell?finally, on and on, and still she wouldn't stop, and had to be dragged from the stage. came Then her second legendary, performance. Impatient with the long lines at the ladies room, Alice simply lifted her skirts and let loose in a corridor of the Corcoran. With this aggressive, behavior, Alice Neel showed us outrageous what itmight mean to be really free of "feminine" constraints. action Her on took a masculinist of everyone reminding edge, in the fireplace. There Jackson Pollock's drunken urinations were as yet no models for how to be feminist without giving up femininity, so we all borrowed masculine gestalts and modes of as needed. behavior, Alice lived her feminism, by her insistent nose and her outlandish defiance of rules for Neel thumbing of convention women. if she But gave a role model, the movement the feminist had gave her a context in which to be understood. labored forty years without recognition, first because was a movement figurative and dominant, movement supported commitment mythic painter because second, in an era she was a woman. The was feminist it her in both respects. Obviously, validated but it also validated her her as a woman, to the specific and individual, as opposed to the of universals abstract Neel's citing In an modernism. article called "The Realist Criminal Linda Nochlin argued that women modernism, abstraction when She she portraiture important and the Abstract Law," artists were subverting as case in point.3 also valued the wit and humor of Alice Neel's art, as our own. Typical of feminism's mischievous it recognizing was famous ArtNews cover of October 1980, which the irony satirized the dominant myth about gender and creativity with a wink at art history: the image was a large group of (feminist) women artists; the label was "Where Are All the Great Men Feminists Artists?" movement humorless gathering I have never understood how critics of the women's can get away with calling feminists grim and a that "feminazis," typical feminist considering with of the seventies rang laughter; its spirit was FALL/WINTER 2006 *?S5 Fig. 3. Romaine Brooks, Una, 50 1/8" x 30 1/8", Smithsonian (1924), oil on canvas, Lady Troubridge American Art Museum, Washington, D.C, Gift of the artist. of feminism was and playful. The political message not by tanks and guns, but through artful and high spirited parry and thrust, with tongues in cheek. The Guerrilla Girls had to get tougher in the '80s, yet their critique was grounded in '70s style humor and cultural play. Yet Alice Neel's wit had a deeper dimension. Seeing the mirthful delivered, simultaneous (2005) retrospective exhibitions of Neel and Andy D.C. led me to think that Neel was to Warhol inWashington, Feminist art asWarhol was to Pop art?she both embodied it, and stood a bit apart from it. Like Warhol, she was a skeptic about humanity in general and American humanity in particular, which she skewered by selecting its salient features and pushing them to the absurd. Both had a dark side, which came out in the bright false cheer of its opposite. Each faced the really bad in life, yet A This content downloaded from 198.91.32.137 on Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:41:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions his dignity through fine clothes and fine art. Neel this ponderous notion of dignity by taking away its parodies defenses. Stripping her own dignity away entirely, exposing all, she dissolves us in laughter where Rembrandt would dissolve us in tears. One might apply to Neel's self-portrait what she preserved fiH-_B_-_si^_^_B^_^_^_^_^_^_^H^ ^ ^Kflla ' __i_rsV_^_^_^_B^ ^ ^Z^H_Ml_-_-_-_-_l_P ^__B_-_-_-___BP_^ _______(/* *l_fll ^^^________________________^^^^ ?L^-3-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-__r ' / / __^Vb4__B_^_^_^_h_^_^_^_9_^_^ ^^k^k^k^k^kfl ^_H^__^__^__^__H --* w H______________H ^_-_-_-_-_-_-_-___H ' ^_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_i ^__-_-___-_-_-_H ^M9_SJ_^_^_I once said seen ^^^ * _^_^_V. _r_u_rl __^___^_L '^^b a_F.__L _^_^_l _?_fl_J_a?K?j__L v*_^_i _E_H_^_Y_H_^_K ?~ &V_I V -fl__?_?^-- _ / i about in sitters: her their assuming unconsciously most characteristic poses, they reveal "what the world has done to them and their retaliation."4 The nude self-portrait might be as Neel's the art world, retaliation?to to art its and history woes. Yet it's not a bitter picture; rather, it's a playful affirmation localized in the life of the absurdity of the human condition, a artist. all her portraits is The theme of female of experiences the self and its defenses, the self and its dreams. Her face speaks from hard knocks. But her of defenses, of wisdom gained in the historical in and nude the now, body?naked in that restraint without imaginary?expands blue-and famous striped chair. Significantly, it is broader here than in other portraits, expanding laterally into a throne. Iwould situate Neel's noted ambivalence about feminism in white terms. similar - I? 5 i ? H ?_? mi /^Kt_U _#'i' ^_H___i_B_ira 7 -v __.. '*w >w_-M_-_-_-_-_-_B_8_$-? \U -"~*#__i 4&ne?_^_l i_________ J-_IHIH-KI-U_-_-HH and Child (c. 1905), oil on canvas, 36 1/4" x 29". Fig. 4. Mary Cassatt, Mother National Chester Dale Collection, Image ? 2006 Board of Trustees, Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. refused to ennoble it as tragic. Each found a way tomake the really bad endurable, softening reality through style. When Alice Neel turned eighty, she evidently decided itwas time to take on art history again. In her nude self-portrait (1980; PL 3), she breaks at least three conventions of artistic tradition. One is that the female nude presents women as objects of the male gaze. As if to redeem the Naked Majas of art history, Neel rises upright, the trailing pentimenti, defiantly proclaiming nude's right to come to life and fight back. Next, this naked old woman escapes the critical gaze through irony: she wields a the tool that artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner paintbrush, strategically positioned at the groin when painting themselves, links between pen and penis, brush and forging metaphoric to of art.Well, you might say, Neel's penis, reify the machismo not is it's brush rather demure, lying in the crook really phallic, of her arm. But, wait! Artistic virility has not been omitted, merely artfully and cleverly transferred to the big toe of the painter's right foot. As the foot arches up, the toe's erection sets the painting's curves into rhyme, pulling the lumpen shapes of a sagging, aging body into aesthetic harmonies of pure design. The third taboo is that old women are not fit subjects for art. Rembrandt presented himself as a tragic figure, stoic and heroic in face of life's hardships. As his face crumbled into old age, he nothing this wasn't "Sisterhood!" more competitive a putdown once she of often self-contradictory asmen. Neel for feminism, she there's "why movement." But "It concluded, just life."5 In this in their full condition, women, of American the competitiveness shows Rabelaisian take on the human and exclaimed, the women's than can humanity, American represent saw women's lib in the larger context of human lib, and when she called herself a humanist, she spoke as awoman, on behalf of a humanity that could also include men. that blue-and-white Mentioning striped chair brings me back life as well to Alice Neel and me. Looking at my portrait, the artist Athena in Tacha noted a slight resemblance between Alice and myself, our coloring and physiognomy. One could explain this by that "every artist paints himself." quoting Cosimo de' Medici, that the artist steals the Or by a related topos of portraiture, sitter's identity for herself to keep. Thus, Romaine Brooks was called the "thief of souls," and Alice Neel described herself as a "collector of souls." Yet an alternative perspective portraits person paints another, artist between collaborations a mysterious persons themselves dictate are done?if they are very liberated can and paint up. Neel extent in a more in place, once said, the way they I in turn feel very liberated people, them one When takes exchange to a certain is to think of sitter. and giving and taking can be more mixed which "The as liberated way."6 I doubt that Iwas Alice Neel's liberated ideal, but Imay well to something in her, have projected qualities that corresponded which she took as a challenge. In confronting me with more of identity than Iwished at the time to share, she may have was by way pushed me to be a bit more open, though at first it of confronting her back. The portrait has a bit of that in it?a little, "how dare you?," and a little, "what of it?" In her eyes, I'm more rakish than I think of myself as being?she gives that hat a my life of its own (itwas actually rather flat). The red scarf says I'm a little more passionate, and the gaze says I'm a little more aggressive. In each of us, there are suppressed and minimized In that sometimes need expressing. parts of our personalities a me in And out favor. Alice did of those me, resisting pulling her, Imay have pushed her tomake the portrait more complex. #fc This content downloaded from 198.91.32.137 on Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:41:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL NOTES When she looked at me, did she recognize a fellow Anglo Saxon born into relative privilege who, like herself, had escaped oppressive social conformity to save herself from drowning, and 1. This the underestimate Neel's amazing ability the a sitter to penetrate 2. in purely visual cues. But I'd like to instantly, and find meaning think that the hint of defiance inmy face and confidence inmy pose were inspired by Alice, found inme by her, and given back tomy mother, by an artist who may have understood me better than either of us Museum [NMWA] on November are reproduced at the Neel symposium in Norma Broude and Mary D. Movement of Garrard, eds., The Power of Feminist Art: The American wound up living unconventionally, liberated by a life in art? Did she see a girl whose mother had worried, as hers did, about her one should choices in life? Maybe not?though daughter's never at from my talk at the Alice Neel Symposium in the Arts, Washington, of Women D.C. Ishowed 19, 2005. Some of the photographs ?s adapted article National 1970s, See Thomas p. 3. B. Hess in Erotic Studies and History Impact (New York: Abrams, Art, 13. Linda Nochlin, "The Realist Criminal 61 (1973), 54-61 and 96-103. knew. 4. Patricia 5. From 6. Hills, Alice an Neel in American texts (New York: Harry N. Abrams, of universities. REVISITED WONDER WOMAN THE POWER TO PROTECT LIKEA CRASH OF THUNDER FROM THE SKY ? WITH THE BEAUTY OF APHRODITE, THE WISDOM OF ATHENA, THE STRENGTHOF HERCULES AND THE SPEED Women Warriors: The Yin and Yang OF MERCURY ? WONDER WOMANARRIVES AS A REINVENTIONOF THE SCULPTOR, LINDASTEIN. NEVER BEFORE HAS THE NEED FORTHISHEROIC KNIGHT BEEN SO GREAT. TIME BECKONS. AND THEWARRIORWOMAN COMES? TO WEAVE HER SPELL AND FURTHER THE CAUSE OF PEACE, Sculpture by LINDA November STEIN 2 -December 547West 27th Street, Suite 308 Chelsea, Manhattan 212. 268.4952 PERPETUALWAR. Hours: Tuesday THREEYEARSAFTERRUNNING NORTHWARD WHILEWATCHING SLUMP 48-PAGE FULL-COLOR THE SLOWDOWNWARD OF THE 9/11 TRADE TOWERS, STEIN BECAME AWARE THAT WITH THE RE-BIRTHING OF HER OWN WOMAN, SYMBOLIC WONDER SHE ARRIVES AT A FORMWHICHMAKESHERFEEL SAFE. 18,2006 FLOMENHAFTGALLERY AND SECURITYINA EQUALITY WORLD THAT SEEMS TO BE SPIRALING MADLY TOWARD - Saturday 10-5 pm CATALOG AVAILABLE Flomenhaft Gallery congratulates for winning the commission three larger-than-life bronze Linda Stein to create sculptures for the $4 million "Walk of theHeroines" at Portland the Abstract Law," Art in State University, 1983), 189-90. Pictures of 1975, reported by Pamela Aliara, N.H.: American Portrait Alice Neel's (Hanover, People: Gallery Press of New England, 1998), 191. University 14 - March 30, 2002 Alice Neel: Black and White, exh. cat., February (New York: Robert Miller Gallery, 2002), opp. plate 48. interview perspective. With Norma Broude, she edited and contributed to four volumes of collected essays in feminist art history that have basic and America Mary D. Garrard, Professor Em?rita of Art History, American is the author of two books on Artemisia Gentileschi University, and studies in Renaissance and (1989 2001), and numerous a art to which feminist she has Baroque history, brought become 1994). as Sex Object: Linda Nochlin, eds., Woman 1730-1970 Inc. 1972), (New York: Newsweek, and Oregon FALL/WINTER 2006 This content downloaded from 198.91.32.137 on Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:41:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PI. 1.Alice ? PI. 2. Alice Estate Neel, Cindy of Alice Neel, Nemser Courtesy and Chuck (1975), oil on canvas, Robert Miller Gallery, New 41 1/2" x 29 3/4" York. Neel, Linda Nochlin and Daisy (1973), oil on canvas, 55 7/8" Museum Arts, x 44". of Fine Boston. Photo: ?2006, Museum Arts, Seth of Fine Boston. K. Sweetser Fund, 1983.496. This content downloaded from 198.91.32.137 on Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:41:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PI. 3. Alice Neel, oil on canvas, National PI. 4. Alice (1980), 1/4" x 39 3/4", Institution, Neel, 1980. Neel, Spanish Harlem oil on canvas, 30" X 25". Private 53 Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian ? Estate of Alice Two Girls, ?Estate Self Portrait of Alice (1959), Neel. Collection. PI. 5. Alice Neel, Ethel Ashton (1930), oil on canvas, This content downloaded from 198.91.32.137 on Mon, 30 Dec 2013 17:41:05 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24" x 22". ?Estate of Alice Neel.