Perry T. Rathbone

In 1940 the City Art Museum of St. Louis made Perry Rathbone its director at 29, said at the time to be the youngest museum director in America. He had trained at Harvard in the course Paul Sachs ran for future curators, and then at the Detroit Institute of Arts under its German-born director, William Valentiner. Eight years later he was posing for Max Beckmann. Rathbone had paid for a portrait of his wife the year before. This one Beckmann began in October 1948 without a commission. He set one of Rathbone's feet up on a chair, rested the right hand on the raised knee with a cigarette between the fingers and put the left in a trouser pocket. The jacket is greenish yellow with black pinstripes, the tie a loose black bow, and Rathbone looks out at us slightly sideways. Behind him are a blue-green patterned wall, two lances and, at the right edge, a red-violet pillar trimmed with gold, a setting that has reminded writers of a cabaret. Beckmann signed it with the place, St. L, and the year, and on 20 November he sold it to his sitter. Rathbone gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1992, 20 years after he stepped down as its director.