 One of America’s leading portraitists Sanden’s works include Christ, Graham, Shea By John H. Adams The Presbyterian Layman Volume 33, Number 6 Posted November 22, 2000
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.
“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 But friends paid for the painting and convinced him that his portrait was a “historical document” important for the future of evangelical ministries.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. |
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