RIDGEFIELD, Conn. – They say you can judge a man by the
company he keeps. In the case of American portraitist John Howard
Sanden, make that the company he paints – three in particular:
Jesus; Billy Graham, the world’s most famous evangelist, and George
Beverly Shea, the all-time leading Gospel singer.
John H. Sanden
Together, they say much about Sanden, who once worked with Graham and
Shea and has been a follower of Christ since childhood. Sanden, a
lifelong Presbyterian and a director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee,
is one of America’s premier portrait artists.
“John Howard Sanden is the closest we have in America to fit the
old role of court painter,” wrote
New York Post columnist
Pete Hamill in 1991. Among his 500-plus portraits, Sanden has painted
royalty, captains of industry and education, religious leaders and
Jesus.
Sanden’s “Portrait of Christ” (1993) hangs in the
chapel of 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, not far from
where he painted it over a number of weeks while a Sunday school class
of the congregation looked on.
“I had agreed to do four Sunday morning adult seminars,” said
Sanden, an elder at 5th Avenue. At someone’s suggestion, Sanden
decided to paint a portrait of Christ as the seminar – if he could
find someone to pose. A concert by jazz great Dave Brubek at 5th Avenue
provided a model. “I was looking over the edge of the balcony and
there sits this young man with a beard and long hair, wearing a leather
jacket.”
The man turned out to be a Jew named Jay Friedkin whose famous father,
William Friedkin, produced the movie
The Exorcist. Jay agreed to
sit for Sanden during the Sunday morning classes, and Sanden’s wife
Elizabeth made a white robe for the young model.
After four weeks, the audience was invited to examine the portrait
closely. Many of those in the receiving line were choking back tears as
they looked at the portrait, into the eyes of a young Jewish man.
It was a special treat for Sanden to paint Billy Graham, his former
boss. At age 25, Sanden began work as art director for Graham’s
ministries. He left the Graham organization at age 34 to become a
portrait artist – a talent he developed while working for Graham
and free-lancing for
Reader’s Digest. He painted nearly 100
small portraits of famous people to illustrate
Reader’s Digest
articles.
Graham was not an eager candidate for a portrait, Sanden said, and
would never have allowed the commission to be paid out by his ministry.
But friends paid for the painting and convinced him that his portrait
was a “historical document” important for the future of
evangelical ministries. So Graham sat three times for his portrait.
Sanden said Graham said a simple prayer before each session, and told
him stories about his father, Oscar E. Sanden, a Presbyterian minister
who worked with Graham when both were evangelists for Youth for Christ
and later after Graham became president of a small college in Minnesota
(now Northwest College). Graham was running the college when he
conducted his famous Los Angeles revival that made him a national figure
– and thereafter a full-time evangelist.
Sanden said Mrs. Ruth Graham attended the final sitting. She looked
over Sanden’s shoulder and made suggestions for changes while her
husband posed patiently, saying little. “We gave him a little bit
of a haircut,” Sanden said. “She wasn’t happy with the
side of his face. Too heavy. So we made a change.”
After the third sitting, at Graham’s home in Montreat, Sanden
joined the Grahams at the nearby Denny’s restaurant. Sanden
remembers that Graham did not eat – because he could not.
Townspeople came by his table to talk with him, and Graham stood to
greet each visitor, Sanden said.
The Sanden portrait of Graham hangs in The Cove near Asheville, Graham’s
training center for evangelists.
Sanden is nearing completion of his portrait of “Bev” Shea,
now 91. “He’s in wonderful health,” Sanden said. The
setting for the Shea portrait is a room with a grand piano. Sanden says
the piano has been both a key design element and a bit of trouble. Shea
is not a retiring musician. During sittings, he would think of a song,
bounce up and go to the piano to play and sing, Sanden says. “He
genuinely loves music,” Sanden says.
Shea’s portrait will hang at the singer’s alma mater,
Houghton College.
A graduate of art school in Minneapolis, Sanden began his career as a
portrait artist in New York in 1969. He is the author of four books on
portraiture:
Painting the Head in Oil (New York: Watson-Guptill
Publications, 1976);
Successful Portrait Painting (Watson-Guptill,
1981);
Portraits From Life (Cincinnati : North Light Books,
1999); and
The Portraits of John Howard Sanden (New York:
Madison Square Press, 2000).
Profile, the magazine of the American Portrait Society, said, in
a 1984 feature article written by the Society’s president, “John
Howard Sanden may well be the best known name in contemporary American
portraiture.”
On May 29, 1994, the American Society of Portrait Artists presented its
first John Singer Sargent Medal for Lifetime Achievement to Sanden. On
September 30 of that same year, Houghton College awarded him the Doctor
of Fine Arts degree.
Sanden is no longer a member of the Presbyterian Lay Committee's
board of directors.