Collect: American Art

Exhibited

"Aaron Shikler: Recent Work," Davis & Langdale, New York, New York, May 2 - June 2, 2006 (in the exhibition catalogue no. 25).

Note

Dubbed “a court painter of American nobility” by The Washington Post, Aaron Shikler is best known for his portraits of America’s social elite, including First Lady Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson, Brooke Astor, Diana Ross, and President Ronald Reagan. He painted the official White House portraits for both Jacqueline Onassis and President John F. Kennedy, the latter posthumously. His adherence to the older, European style of portraiture made him enormously popular during a time when abstraction and dramatization were otherwise in vogue. In addition to portraiture, Shikler created several still life paintings, often close-up views of irises in bloom. Shikler’s use of saturated colors combined with the hyper-focused view of the petals in Iris (Double Little Blackfoot) emits a light, playful feeling on a classic subject.