WASHINGTON, May 31, 2013 (by Karin Zeitvogel for RIA Novosti) - Moscow-born artist Boris Chaliapin was a prolific cover artist for the weekly Time Magazine, turning out so many dead-ringer likenesses of the glamorous and famous of his era that he earned himself the nickname “Mr Time” and now, an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
Twenty-six of Chaliapin’s Time covers portraying 20th century icons from Marilyn Monroe to boxer Muhammad Ali and former US first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, went on display at the gallery near Washington’s Chinatown in early May, and will remain on the walls of a second-floor exhibit hall until January next year.
The pictures on display are a tiny portion of the National Portrait Gallery’s Time collection, which includes more than 2,000 original covers from the magazine by various artists.
Chaliapin worked for Time for 28 years, from 1942 to 1970, producing more than 400 covers that were published by the magazine and scores more that he stashed in the attic of his home in Connecticut after they were rejected for one reason or another.
A cover by Chaliapin of author J.P. Donleavy, painted in November 1963 when the writer was about to debut a play on Broadway, ended up in the attic when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated a day before the weekly issue of Time was due to come out.
Click here to see a gallery of the Boris Chaliapin art exhibition.
A portrait of General George C. Marshall, who helped the Allies win World War II and after whom the highly successful post-war aid program for Europe, the Marshall Plan, was named, also never made it onto the cover of Time but hangs now in the National Portrait Gallery.
Chaliapin was born in Moscow in 1904. His mother was an Italian ballerina, his father, Fyodor Chaliapin, an opera singer so well known that there is a Fyodor Chaliapin Museum in St. Petersburg, a Chaliapin House Museum in Moscow, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has called the elder Chaliapin “one of the greatest opera singers of all time.”
Boris Chaliapin wanted to become a singer, but his father recognized that following in the footsteps of one of the greatest opera singers of all time would be tough and pushed him to study art instead.
By the time Chaliapin came to the United States in 1935, he had studied sculpting in Russia, painting in Paris and had shown his work at exhibits in London.
He soon became a US citizen and lived with his wife Helcia in Easton, Conn., where he painted, among others, another local Russian-American, aerospace pioneer Igor Sikorsky.
That painting was not done for Time, but famous Russians Chaliapin did paint for the magazine include cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, whose portrait Chaliapin turned around with a wicked hangover – he’d been up drinking vodka till 4 am with his wife to celebrate their 19th anniversary – and in a record seven hours.
The Gagarin portrait is not in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition but it didn’t end up in the attic in Easton either; it made the front of Time on April 21, 1961.
