Elizabeth Shoumatoff

She also painted international leaders, including William Tubman, president of Liberia, Rabindranath Tagore the Nobel Prize-winning Bengali poet, the grandchildren of Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and Anne Cox Chambers, U.S. Ambassador to Belgium.

The field of work recorded is painting, oil painting and visual arts. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait. Works named in the authority record are Unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harvey Samuel Firestone. Work by Elizabeth Shoumatoff is recorded in the collections of The Frick Collection, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Little White House and National Portrait Gallery.

• Name — Elizabeth Shoumatoff • Birth Name — Elizabeth Avinoff • Born — 6 October 1888 • Birthplace — Kharkov, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire (modern Kharkiv, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine) • Died — 30 November 1980 • Place of death — Glen Cove, New York, United States • Occupation — Portrait Artist • Known for — Unfinished portrait of President Roosevelt (FDR) • Notable Works — Portraits of FDR, President Johnson • Relatives — Andrey Avinoff (brother), Alex Shoumatoff (grandson), Antonia Shoumatoff (granddaughter)

Shoumatoff was born in Kharkov on October 6, 1888, the youngest child of an aristocratic family in what was then Imperial Russia. Her father, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Avinov (1844–1911) was a lieutenant-general in the Imperial Russian Army. Shoumatoff's eldest sibling Nikolai, a professor of fiscal law, was the Assistant Minister of Interior Affairs in the Russian Provisional Government under Kerensky. He was the only member of the family to remain in Russia after the Russian Revolution and was executed during the Stalinist purge of 1937. Her next oldest brother Andrey Avinoff was a prominent entomologist and artist who became the Director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth Shoumatoff emigrated to the United States just before October Revolution with her family. Her husband, Leo Shoumatoff, became the business manager of Sikorsky Aircraft Company in its early years. The family lived in Merrick, Long Island.

• Illustration — Madame Shoumatoff with FDR Shoumatoff's extraordinary talent for portraiture brought commissions from some of the most illustrious families in America, Great Britain and Europe. She painted over 3,000 portraits in sixty years over her lifetime. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sitting for her at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, when he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945. While she was painting his portrait, he exclaimed: "I have a terrific headache." The original unfinished portrait hangs in the Little White House in Warm Springs and a finished copy commissioned for the Oval Office by President Lyndon B. Johnson is part of the White House collection. Johnson, who had famously rejected Peter Hurd's prior portrait of him, approved Shoumatoff's painting as his official presidential portrait.

• Illustration — Portrait of Lyndon Baines Johnson, oil paint, 1969. • Illustration — Official Presidential portrait of Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1968. • Illustration — Watercolor portrait of Shoumatoff's brother, Andrey Avinoff, 1975. • Illustration — Portrait of Ethel Roosevelt Derby, oil paint.