VINTAGE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH OF WILLIAM F DRAPER'S WW2 MILITARY NAVAL PAINTING......

THIS BEAUTIFUL 8" X 10" LARGE FORMAT PHOTOGRAPH WAS SHOT ON RARE ANSCOCHROME GLOSSY FILM.....
 

A great addition to any photographic military collection...

Please see photograph for details and all questions are welcome....

WILLIAM F DRAPER:

William F. Draper was a portrait painter and former combat artist who depicted many of the world's wealthiest and most powerful.

In Mr. Draper's five decade career, his subjects included President Richard M. Nixon, Mayor John V.  Lindsay of New York, the Shah of Iran, the financier Paul Mellon, Dr. Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic, Terence Cardinal Cooke, the actress Celeste Holm and the New York socialite and jazz harpist Daphne Hellman.  A portrait he did of John F. Kennedy, based on an oil sketch for which the president sat in 1962, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

William Franklin Draper was born in Hopedale, Mass, on Dec. 24, 1912.  He studied at Harvard and the National Academy of Design in New York.  After joining the Navy in 1942, he served in the South Pacific as a combat artist.  An expert illustrator, he worked in oils, painting battle scenes that he observed on Bougainville, Guam, Saipan and elsewhere, as well as noncombat images of soldiers at work and at play.

In 1944 National Geographic reproduced 69 of his war images in four issues.  In 1945 the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington organized an exhibition of works by five official war artists, including Mr. Draper, and in the same year the Metropolitan Museum included him in a show called, "The War Against Japan."

During the war, Mr. Draper was also commissioned to paint portraits of Adm. Chester W. Nimitz and Adm. William F. Halsey.  By the time he left the Navy in 1945, he was a lieutenant Commander and had earned a Bronze Star.

In May 2000 he was featured in a PBS television special on combat artists called "They Drew Fire."

After the war, Mr. Draper established a studio on Park Avenue and began his career in portraiture.  Trained as a pianist before he turned to art, he played classical music as well as jazz.

In 1999 he received the Portrait Society of America's gold medal, its highest honor.