My dear friend and colleague Richard Ely passed away this week. He was a brilliant artist and illustrator. This was the most recent drawing I did of him in December 2008 (which he loved!). Below you will find a variety of his work demonstrating his unique ability to be versatile with styles and always with a level of utmost quality and grace.
He would often regale me with stories of Marlene Dietrich cooking for him in Berlin or getting into a squabble with Katharine Hepburn because she tore his pad out of his hands to inspect his drawing of her, or how when Lotte Lenya was in "Cabaret" on Broadway she would call him up at 1 AM to go get a hamburger. He loved to tell these stories and he knew I loved to hear them. He drew anyone who was ANYONE and the most chic and famous sought him out to get a portrait done. His portrait of Tallulah Bankhead is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.
Always at the top of his game, I never saw him make a bad drawing. He would come to my open drawing sessions at FIT and would make incredible pictures filled with life and energy and was constantly complimenting me and filling me encouragement that I am not sure I always deserved. Attached at the bottom of this post is an interview Richard gave to the school magazine last spring. On it he wrote a letter to me filled with his unending words of praise and kindness. He would do these sorts of things without notice and he understood the value of talent in another person. I shall miss him dearly.
