Kenneth Doolittle

Kenneth Doolittle was an able-bodied seaman and a heroin addict. He moved in with artist Alice Neel to 33 Cornelia Street in New York, NY, in 1932.

In December of 1934, Kenneth Doolittle, in a rage, burns more than three hundred of Neel’s drawings and watercolors and slashes more than fifty oil paintings at their apartment on Cornelia Street. Neel’s painting of Isabetta is slashed beyond repair. Neel later repaints a new image in the same pose.

Charles Finch notes in "Queen of Hearts" --

Doolittle did destroy more than 300 of her drawings, watercolors and paintings in a jealous rage, but Neel still continued to see him for awhile, and Hoban establishes through interviews with his children that he was not the stone cold junkie Neel judged him to be in retrospect, and may have even been a bit of a feminist.

Links

• http://www.aliceneel.com/biography/1930.shtml
• http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/finch/phoebe-hoban-alice-...