Sitting for Alice Neel
An interview with Margaret Evans, painted by Neel in 1978
What’s it like to be in the room when someone’s painting? To feel that atmosphere and electricity as someone marks a canvas, stroke by stroke, creating a work that will be around longer than anyone in that room. What if that painter was Alice Neel (b.1900; d.1984), the American artist who worked from her small live-in studio on New York’s Upper West Side, and painted people of all ages, professions, genders and backgrounds. What if that sitter was you, except you were bulging – along with your twin – inside your mother’s belly?
A few weeks ago, I received a message on Instagram from @india.evansnyc to say she was that twin. I immediately wrote back, along with a flurry of questions to try my luck: How did your mother know Neel? What was she like? What was it like to sit for her and how did she set up the scene? How did your mother feel sitting for her pregnant, and did she replicate how she felt internally? What was it like to be in her apartment? What were her views on the world?
Luckily, Evans not only replied, but said she’d ask her mother, too. They both wrote the below to me, so I could share it with you. Scroll on to see their answers to my (many) questions. (Part 1 is India; Part 2 is Margaret.)
Love Katy
Part 1: India Evans
When I would tell people in art school that I was painted by Alice Neel, nobody could believe it—one of my teachers almost fell out of her seat! My whole family was painted by Alice in three separate canvases. She painted a full-body portrait of my father in 1968, then in 1978 she painted my mother pregnant (so technically my twin sister Honor and I are in the painting, in utero!). In 1979 she called my father John Evans (who was a dear friend of hers) and said, “Bring those babies over. I want to paint them bald.” My mother, Margaret Evans wound up being painted into this third canvas because she was trying to keep us still! We went three times and Alice wanted us to come back so she could finish the painting, but sadly Alice passed away before she could finish the third painting.
It’s a funny story of how the third painting of us twins and my mother came to hang over our living room sofa from when I was a baby until 2012 when it was sold at auction. My father was walking down the street in the East Village, one of us twins on his back, the other in the stroller. He saw a junkie with a cart and amongst his things was a painting. My father took a closer look and recognised it was painted by Alice Neel. He asked how much and the guy said “quince, quince!” My father had exactly $15 in his pocket. He lugged it home with his groceries and us twins in tow. When he called Alice, she was ecstatic. She explained that the gallery where she was having a show had been robbed the night before and that was one of the paintings that was stolen. She asked him to bring it right over.
My father responded “Hey, wait a minute lady, I think I’m doing you a favour, let’s make a trade.” At first Alice was upset – she even called him a “rat” – but then realised he was right as he could’ve just kept the painting. She said you can’t have the one of you, or the one of Margaret pregnant, but you can have the one of Margaret and the twins. So it’s hung over our sofa all these years.
Years later, my family and I went to one of Alice’s openings at the Robert Miller Gallery and there hanging in the show was what looked like the same painting that was in our living room! We asked Alice’s daughter-in-law Nancy (who was at the exhibition) about it, and Nancy said that Alice must have made a copy of it since it was one of her favourite paintings. Then, my father remembered that Alice would often replicate works.
One time he went to visit her in Spanish Harlem and she was painting a duplicate of another one of her paintings. My father asked her what she was doing. She explained she was going to make a trade with a caviar dealer. She said, “Do you really think I’d give him the original?” Since she was a little annoyed with my father asking for a trade, she made a copy of ours to keep but gave us the original.
Both of my parents remembered Alice as being witty, chatty and also quite sly. My mother recalls that she talked the entire time she sat down for her portrait; Alice loved to gossip and talk about people, which made the time go by quickly. My mother said Alice really captured that fear of the unknown that most expecting mothers feel both about giving birth and about the future of becoming a mama. My mother and father didn’t even want kids, yet she got pregnant with twins! She was also at the last month of the pregnancy, so she was a bit swollen and uncomfortable, but overall she loved the experience of being painted by Alice and hearing her stories.
Part 2: “From My Mother” – Margaret Evans
My life began in an old town in Mobile, Alabama near the Gulf of Mexico. My mother was involved with a theater group where I helped her often backstage with props. My father was a lawyer who graduated from Yale law. He was involved with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and in Alabama. He helped found the Peace Corps bringing his whole family to live in Nigeria.
I was the eldest child so I went to school in Florence (which was closer to Africa than Alabama was). I graduated from Briarcliff college in Westchester, New York and moved to New York City where I met a young man playing his sitar on the corner of 4th and Jones Street. We decided to hitchhike to India to meet his guru and he played the sitar all along the way. While I was on this hippie trail hitchhiking across land from Amsterdam through most of Europe to Turkey, Iran to Nepal, a dear friend wrote me a letter telling me I had to meet this great artist she had recently met named John Evans.
When I came back from my trip I broke up with my boyfriend. John and I met at a party at a friend’s loft on the Bowery. That was the beginning of a beautiful life together in the East Village. Alice Neel and John were close friends. They met through the art world, at a mutual friend’s party. She came up to him and asked if she could paint his portrait, he was flattered and after that they would see each other often.
She painted a full body portrait of him in 1968 and a few of his friends like Mary Ellen (photographer) and Benny Andrews (painter):
I admired Alice a great deal and described in detail what she was like when she painted my portrait. Here are passages from my diary about the experience.
May 31, 1978: Today will be my last day to sit for Alice Neel, who is doing my portrait. It has been great to watch her do me and I like the outcome so far but it is a long trip by bus to her house in Harlem from the East Village. The first sessions were being taped by Michele Auder (who is the ex husband of Viva) but he made it hard for Alice to work so wasn't there yesterday.
Alice has been painting for over fifty years. She was born in 1900 and only in the last fifteen has she become recognised as a genius portraitist. She is round and still pretty, but says her looks are deceiving.
“I look like anybody’s grandmother but I'm really a vicious old woman.” I don't see her vicious side only the grandmotherly and artist side. She has said to us for quite a while, “Don't you want a baby a little keepsake, a souvenir?” Now she says that God has forgiven John Evans for not having a baby all these years by sending him two at once, twins!
I think she has captured a nice essence in my portrait. She was fascinated with my long neck and torso and short legs. The belly is a beautiful yellow and legs are purple. The mouth is a sweet smile and eyes are large and staring. She said I looked inspired. My hair is pulled back to show the neck and what she calls a Greek head.
Yesterday she started painting my profile in a mirror behind the chair which seems to clutter the work but I'm sure it will work in the end). Do the twins feel my uplifted mood after being painted by Alice Neel? The painting is great, the air of expectance is so strong!
Incredible you've managed to glean testimonies from both India and Margaret Evans, spanning two different time periods, and even got the father to speak indirectly.
What about the other twin?
So amazing, I wanted to keep reading! An entire series like this would be incredible !