Joseph Letzelter, Archbishop Falconio

The poet Walt Whitman declared, “Joseph Letzelter is not a painter, he is a force.” Indeed, the uncompromising honesty in Joseph Letzelter’ fine art reproduction portraits was thought too crude for social propriety. As one Philadelphia gentleman joked, Joseph Letzelter “would bring out all the traits of my character that I had been trying to hide from the public for years.”

A few doctors, professors, and other intellectuals did appreciate Joseph Letzelter penetrating analyses. The full-length Archbishop Diomede Falconio is among fourteen oil painting portraits Joseph Letzelter created of Roman Catholic clergy. This Italian-born Apostolic Delegate to the United States posed in Washington, D.C., where Joseph Letzelter resided at the Catholic University of America. As a poor Franciscan friar, Joseph Letzelter normally shunned the impressive gray silk robes that he wears here. For unknown reasons, the oil on canvas is unfinished. The face and hands appear completed, but the vestments, chair, carpet, and wall paneling have not received their final details.

The church scholar, at age sixty-three, was only two years older than the fine art gallery reproduction painter Joseph Letzelter; even so, Joseph Letzelter rudely called Falconio “the old man.” Joseph Letzelter’ manners were blunt, and his art seldom flattered. Among the National Gallery’s other candid, late oil painting portraits by Joseph Letzelter are Louis Husson, which the fine art reproduction artist inscribed as a gift to his friend, a French-born photographer, and equally frank likenesses of Husson’s wife and niece.