Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1052459
John Nance Garner and Speaker of the House William Bankhead (fig. 13). In fact, Christy had painted a flat- tering portrait of Bankhead's wife, Florence. He was friends with Architect of the Capitol David Lynn and had painted the likeness of Roosevelt no less than three times for posters of the president's annual Birthday Ball celebration. The Fine Arts Commission was of little help, prompting Keller to lament to Bankhead, "This body moves so slowly that it is impossible for me to suggest longer waiting in the matter. I therefore suggest unhesi- tatingly that you proceed . . . ." That same day, the com- mission convened. The choice was unanimous: Christy got the commission to paint The Scene at the Signing of the U.S. Constitution. 36 That summer, Christy traveled to Washington, D.C. and began work on the "big painting," as he called it, on 1 September 1939. By day, he worked in the sail loft of Washington's Navy Yard where, at the opposite end, a 290-piece Navy band rehearsed Sousa marches—his favorite. At night, he resided at the elegant Mayflower Hotel. When not painting, he would travel to the White House, Mount Vernon, and other places to conduct additional research so that every detail would be right. Christy claimed that he finished the painting in only seven months, even while occasionally paint- ing portraits of local Washingtonians during the same period (fig. 14). 38 For the painting's dedication on 31 May 1940, 20 muscular men worked eight hours to temporarily dis- play the 1,700-pound work in the Capitol Rotunda. Its monstrous size obscured the two colossal paintings on the wall behind it. With both houses of Congress in attendance, there were over 500 people in the Rotunda to witness the event. The audience applauded as two American flags were drawn aside to reveal the canvas, while the Navy Band performed the National Anthem from the Capitol portico. In formally accepting the painting, Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky used it as a rallying cry against "all corrosive influence from within and from any brutal juggernaut that may assail them from without." Barkley's reference to a juggernaut could not have been accidental: nothing better described the Nazi spearhead that had overrun 12 Fig. 15. Howard Chandler Christy's The Scene at the Signing of the U.S. Constitution, 1940 THE CAPITOL DOME