Linus Pauling

Linus Carl Pauling 28 Feb 1901 - 19 Aug 1994

Always concerned with painting from life and focused on the expressive potential of portraiture, Alice Neel had worked in relative obscurity until the 1960s, when she settled on the brightly colored, expressively distorted and linear painting style that she would develop for the rest of her life. During the summer of 1969, Neel traveled to Big Sur and spent several days visiting with and painting the double Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling and his wife, Ava Helen Miller Pauling, at their house on the Pacific coast. Pauling recalled that he “had little experience in posing for a painter, and... was interested in Alice Neel’s technique.” Neel may have been attracted to Pauling not only for his achievements in chemistry and molecular biology, but for his protests against nuclear testing and the excessive buildup of nuclear weapons, for which he had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962.

Previous Owner: Artist's Estate

Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution