![]() Yet somehow, the sitting always seems to end in effusive thanks and invitations to tea. Hockney, meanwhile, forces Schwartz out of his comfort zone, as the photographer tries to incorporate the artist’s own painting of his parents into the shot countless negatives show how the two work together. In fact, the ballet superstar looks “like a walking zombie” after a round of endless performances and partying. According to his notes, most meetings seem to start by someone saying how busy and tired they are: Henry Moore is “harassed”, Zandra Rhodes is “quite drowsy”, Rudolf Nureyev is “exhausted”. He seems to have needed it to court and cajole his famous faces. Soon, Schwartz used his contacts to get sittings in London, and the results would go so well (Thatcher used a portrait for an electoral campaign) that new sitters would appear by word-of-mouth.īoth Michael and Roberts affectionately use the same term to describe Schwartz’s approach: tunnel vision. He had always loved it: he bought his first Kodak aged 14. The Schwartzes began to split their time between La Jolla, California and London it was also now that Bern could start photographing in earnest. Eventually Schwartz would buy a textile manufacturing company in 1954, which led to him making a substantial fortune he sold it to Standard Oil of Indiana in 1968. It led to many successful business ventures for a man who seems to have mixed suave, calm charm with a whirling restlessness. It was hardly a propitious time – but it was also the end of Prohibition, and the young Schwartz got a job selling beer trays to a newly alcoholic nation. His father died when he was 18, forcing him to immediately get to work. Schwartz’s 1977 portrait of Margaret Thatcher, which she went on to use in an electoral campaign © National Portrait Gallery, Londonīern Schwartz was born in New York City in 1914 and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “To have the notes and the negatives from the working process… that’s what makes it really special,” says Roberts.įigure skater John Curry, 1977, by Schwartz © National Portrait Gallery, London The notes from his classes with the great Philippe Halsman are in the gift too, plus correspondence typed up by Schwartz’s ever-supportive wife Ronny. Not bad when you consider that he had his first proper lesson in photography in 1973, when he was nearing 60. ![]() The gift also preserves the legacy of Schwartz, who went from being a penniless youth in the Great Depression to a very rich man who got to photograph John Gielgud and Golda Meir, Margot Fonteyn and Edward Heath, “Kiwi Te Kanawa” and Cardinal Basil Hume. It has allowed the Bodleian to hire a curator of photography for the very first time, who will be able to marshal a huge and disparate holding that ranges from William Henry Fox Talbot’s personal archive to extensive photography of the anti-apartheid movement.ĭavid Hockney, 1977, by Schwartz © National Portrait Gallery, London If the Foundation has already given gifts and prints to various non-profit institutions, as part of its aim to preserve Bern’s legacy, this is its biggest cash donation ever. They have been given Schwartz’s entire archives – a time capsule of 1970s portraits, negatives, faded typewritten notes, thank-you letters and Schwartz’s favoured camera (a Hasselblad medium-format) – alongside a gift of £2mn by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, now headed up by his three children and a family friend. These are the brightest traces of the Bodleian Libraries’ latest big acquisition. King Charles III (then Prince of Wales), 1977, by Schwartz © National Portrait Gallery, London “In America, he’s called ‘Prince’ all the time,” records Schwartz. ![]() He assures us that the future king has a “very, very warm manner” Charles’s only request was that he not be called “Prince”. They are by Bern Schwartz, the businessman who made a surprising and successful late conversion to professional photography. “He is an unusually good-looking young man, better-looking than I thought from his pictures” read the notes on the royal sitting, which took place in March 1977. Schwartz’s photograph of the newsreader Angela Rippon, 1977 © National Portrait Gallery, London King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, grins in a carefree way not seen much in the five decades since. David Hockney stands pensively beside a portrait of his own father, while Rudolf Nureyev sits in his chair, slightly tense. Angela Rippon, the newsreader, prances gaily in a chiffon dress Margaret Thatcher smiles as only she can. Somewhere inside Oxford’s austere Weston Library, a vast, deep part of the city’s Bodleian Libraries that holds a fair chunk of its 13 million items, figures from the gloriously mahogany mid-1970s come to life.
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