Richard Langtry Partington Florence Foster Jenkins, 1923 Amateur Soprano by Richard Langtry Partington 1923

Description

A fine portrait of a Philadelphia lady, fabled soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, by Richard Langtry Partington (American, 1968-1929), 1923. Signed … more A fine portrait of a Philadelphia lady, fabled soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, by Richard Langtry Partington (American, 1968-1929), 1923. Signed lower right with "Philadelphia" and date "1923".
Condition: Painting professionally cleaned and restored of tears and paint loses; revarnished with UV protectant varnish (see images for more detail). Unframed. Image size: 52"H x 32"W.

Born in Stockport, England on Dec. 7, 1868. Partington was a member of a family of artists who played a lively part in the cultural life of the San Francisco Bay area. He immigrated to Oakland with his family in 1889. With his father, he established the Partington Art School in San Francisco at 414 Pine Street across the hall from Wm Keith's studio. He also was a quick-sketch artist for the Examiner at the turn of the century. When the fire of 1906 destroyed the school, he returned to Oakland as a curator of the Piedmont Art Gallery. He became well known locally for his sensitive portraits. In 1916 he followed a portrait commission to Philadelphia and remained there until his death on June 3, 1929. Member: Athenian-Nile Club (Oakland). Exh: San Francisco Art Association, 1892-1900; Calif. Midwinter Int'l Expo, 1894; Calif. State Fair, 1894-95; Oakland Industrial Expo, 1896; Oakland Library, 1908; Berkeley AA, 1908; Alaska-Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909; Bohemian Club, 1911-14; Calif. Artists, Golden Gate Park Museum, 1915. In: Oakland Museum.
Florence Foster Jenkins, original name Nascina Florence Foster, (born July 19, 1868, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died November 26, 1944, New York, New York, U.S.), American amateur soprano, music lover, philanthropist, and socialite who gained fame for her notoriously off-pitch voice. She became a word-of-mouth sensation in the 1940s through her self-funded performances in New York City.
Florence Foster Jenkins was born into a wealthy and cultured family. Her father, Charles Dorrance Foster, was a successful banker and lawyer, and her mother was a painter. Her parents supported her early interest in music with piano lessons but refused to pay for singing lessons when she showed no natural ability in that capacity. Undeterred, she set off to pursue a career as a soprano on her own. In 1883 she married Francis Thornton Jenkins, a physician from whom she contracted syphilis. She separated from Jenkins in 1902. She met the actor St. Clair Bayfield in about 1908, and he became Jenkins’s manager and companion for the rest of her life. Upon her father’s death in 1909, Jenkins inherited a great deal of money that she put toward voice lessons. Those lessons revealed clearly that she could not carry a tune or hit the high notes expected of a soprano, that she had no sense of rhythm, and that she was essentially tone-deaf. Again, undeterred, and now with the necessary funds, she began to arrange her own performances for small club luncheons and teas and establish a career for herself. She also founded the Verdi Club in 1917, a society to support musicians.

The death of her mother in 1930 left Jenkins with a sizable inheritance and the freedom to expand her singing activities. She also used her money to become active within the cultural clubs and organizations in the city. By all accounts, Jenkins felt extremely confident in her singing abilities, loved to sing, and went to whatever lengths necessary to perform. She often performed in full costume of her own design, most of the time with her piano accompanist Cosmé McMoon. In the 1940s, then in her 70s, she financed five recordings of her singing arias, which were released by the Melotone record label. Her first recording (1941) featured the arias of the Queen of the Night from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and it sold very well—primarily, however, as a novelty item. The pinnacle of her career—a sold-out show (organized by Jenkins) at Carnegie Hall on October 25, 1944, came just one month before she died. Before a crowd of 3,000 devoted fans, critics, and those interested in witnessing the spectacle that Jenkins had become, she performed arias and songs accompanied by McMoon. The crowd erupted, and an onslaught of mocking newspaper reviews followed. She had a heart attack a few days later and died the next month. less