Page 6 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 2 Winter 2014

6
MEMORIES
By Berkley Latimer, faculty emeritus
In December 2013, the School’s distinctive
portrait of John G. Winant of the Form
of 1908 earned a place of honor in the
entrance lobby of Ohrstrom Library,
facing that of library benefactor George
L. Ohrstrom ’45.
The origin of the portrait, its signifi-
cance, and how it came into the School’s
collection are shrouded in speculation,
but the reemergence of Winant’s portrait
is opportune. Matthew Barzun ’88 was
appointed in 2013 as Ambassador to the
Court of St. James, the post Winant filled
during the bleak days of World War II.
Meanwhile, an ad hoc study committee
spearheaded by the N.H. House majority
leader is working to raise funds to erect
a statue of Winant in Concord by sum-
mer 2015 to coincide with the city’s
250th anniversary.
The portrait itself was “rediscovered”
in storage in late 2011 by Director of
Ohrstrom Library Kevin Barry. There
seems to be no record of the portrait’s
movements. In 2012, library funds paid
to clean and restore it to pristine condi-
tion. It was then placed temporarily in
the School Archives in Ohrstrom, where
the student John G. Winant Society often
meets. Rector Mike Hirschfeld ’85 sug-
gested it be moved to a place where it
could be more widely viewed.
Winant served on the SPS faculty from
1912 to 1917 and 1919 to 1929. In addition
to his ambassadorial tenure (1941-46), in
1935 he served as the first chairman of the
Social Security Board. He also served as dir-
ector-general of the International Labour
Organization (1939-41) headquartered in
Geneva. Winant’s ILO work gave him wide
exposure to the European situation in the
entre-guerre period. It also represented a
continuation of his commitment to pro-
gressive social causes evident in his three
terms (1925-27 and 1931-34) as governor
of New Hampshire. Finding his own Repub-
lican party too conservative on many
issues, Winant, who remained a Republi-
can, broke with the party and chose to
work with the Roosevelt administration,
mirroring the tensions of today’s politics.
Sadly, Winant took his own life in 1947,
the day the first of an expected three vol-
umes of his memoir Letter from Grosve-
nor Square appeared. He is buried in the
School cemetery.
The Winant oil-on-canvas portrait
measures 26 x 33 inches, giving it viewing
dimensions in its 4-inch-wide gold frame
of 25.5 x 32.5 inches. The artist was an
unconventional individualist named Olive
Tilton Bigelow Pell, who was also a jour-
nalist and a suffragette. She was married
in 1927 to statesman Herbert Pell and the
couple led an energetic social life. Affixed
to the bottom center of the portrait’s
frame is a small brass plaque with the
three-tiered inscription “Presented by/
Alexander Tilton Holmsen/S.P.S. 1949.”
Holmsen – grandson of the artist – told
Alumni Horae that the portrait was donated
by Mrs. Pell in his honor sometime after
Alexander’s 1949 graduation, which she
attended. The gift’s date was undoubtedly
after November 30, 1950, as the portrait
was singled out in a Newport Daily News
report as one of 34 portraits Mrs. Pell
exhibited in a private showing in her
Rhode Island home.
The portrait itself is unusual for a variety
of reasons. First, it depicts Winant in pro-
file (strangely reminiscent of the famous
Holbein painting of Erasmus), gazing
intently at a piece of paper, with a curved
scroll beneath him with the four-tiered
inscription “John G. WINANT/3 times
Governor of New Hampshire/and Am-
bassador to the Court of St. James/
Throughout World War II, 1941-1946.” In
the upper right background is a portion
of a faintly distinguishable American flag.
Characteristic of Bigelow’s style, the por-
trait features a soft gauzy image.
The dates are curious, given that the
painting was completed in 1945. (Accord-
ing to the restorer, the banner was not a
late addition.) Did Winant tell the artist
that he intended to resign his ambassador-
ship in 1946? Indeed, Winant’s period of
service as ambassador precisely coincided
with the dates. Or do the dates oddly modify
U.S. participation in World War II? Prior to
the 1945 detonation of two atomic bombs
on Japanese soil, there were plans for a
two-pronged attack on the Japanese home
islands, the second in March 1946, which
Portrait of a (Winant) Portrait
Artist Olive Tilton Bigelow Pell (l.) donated
the Winant portrait in honor of her grand-
son (r.) Alexander Tilton Holmsen ’49.
COURTESY A.T. HOLMSEN ’49