John Rothschild

At the 1932 First Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit Alice Neel meets John Rothschild (1900-1975), a Harvard graduate from a wealthy family who runs a travel business. Their friendship will last throughout their lives.

Rothschild has decided [in 1935] to leave his wife and children, the subject of a number of Neel’s paintings. He wants to live with Neel, but she is ambivalent about it. She decides to get an apartment for herself, and moves to 347 1/2 West 17th Street, New York.

Rothschild, a Harvard man and a dandy, though not one of the banker Rothschilds, supported Neel, forever, and enjoyed her favors, although Neel condemns him as a lover who prefers his clothes and the Harvard Club to her, in Neel’s jaundiced view. He is the subject of one of her most lurid and amusing paintings, Bathroom Scene (1935), in which the two naked lovers attend to penis, hair and other body parts after coitus. What Hoban rightly characterizes as the "sarcastic" side of Neel’s work is worthy of Thomas Rowlandson or Ralph Steadman.

Links

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