Clues to artist Greta Kempton

NAPLES COUPLE'S MASSIVE COLLECTION CONTAINS THEIR ONLY CLUES TO ARTIST GRETA KEMPTON

By Harriet Howard Heithaus

Portrait artist Greta Kempton has been dead since 1991. Yet the Wesley and Kristen Jasinski family live in her world, surrounded by the lushly colored subjects that obsessed the woman known in her time as “America’s Court Painter.”

Nearly 400 of the Austrian-born artist’s works hang on their walls, divided between their gently sprawling Naples home and a pillared Golden Gate Estates manor known as The Knickerbocker. The property management/ developer couple rent the latter out for conferences, retreats and reunions.

As a gathering place, The Knickerbocker comes with a permanent guest list of famous faces, gazing down in gilt-framed approval on a business meeting or wedding ceremony. The Jasinskis’ own home has the air of an Old World portrait wing of a castle.

The couple chose this world, intrigued by, then committed to, Kempton’s insatiable drive to immortalize people she met. They both lament that no one seems to have known her beyond her imperially styled clothes, perfect hair, minks and hats crowned with waves of netting.

Even her cool answers to interviewers were perfect — when she chose to answer the questions.

That famous face

Most Americans know at least one Greta Kempton work: her presidential portrait of Harry S. Truman. The iconic one that hangs in the White House is among eight she painted of the 33rd commander-in-chief. It became a calling card for Kempton, who also painted most of the Truman cabinet.

About 30 of her portraits, including several of first lady Bess Truman and their daughter, Margaret, hang in the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri.

But a good number of Kempton paintings are in the halls of wealthy family homes.

“She was commanding $10,000 a painting in the 1930s and ’40s,” Kristen Jasinski said. “That was a lot of money for the time. Everyone wanted a painting by her.”

“She was a good observer of inside emotions. She knew how to capture their character,” her husband added.

In the Golden Gate Estates home, a portrait of Ava Gardner conveys a sense of lonely beauty. In the Jasinski home, Shirley Temple appears as an ingénue with curls and dimples, but wearing the worldly smile of a seasoned trooper. Captain George Fried, who rescued crews of two distressed ships over his seafaring career, fixes a vigilant reassurance on the viewer.

Portraits like those have startled their teenage daughter’s friends: “They said they feel like they’re watching you,” she said, with an impish grin.

The late Cardinal Stritch of Chicago. Heads of universities. Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. Movie mogul Adolph Zukor. All were immortalized by Kempton’s brush.

“She painted ordinary people, too, because she liked their faces,” Kristen Jasinski said, pausing before what appears to be a Chinese elder. He is actually a character actor Kempton spotted on a Hollywood set.

There are maids, railroad workers and children of every background. There also are unidentified familiar faces.

“This is one of the challenges. Who did she really paint? We have a lot of portraits who look like stars. You can say this is Elizabeth Taylor, but is it really early Elizabeth Taylor?” Jasinski asked.

‘Like a lion’

The Jasinskis never met Greta (she pronounced it GREET-uh) Kempton. As her unintentional legacists, what they know of her life is as colorful as her paintings;

Marriage was one thing Kempton did not perfect. She apparently financed her emigration to the U.S. with her daughter by smuggling a cache of gems from an abusive husband in South America. In return, he dragged her through California courts in a custody battle that cost her a good deal of that gem money.

Another of her four husbands sued her for alimony. Through it all, Greta Kempton kept painting: “I fought like a lion to paint,” she told one interviewer.

There were no color-smeared smocks for her. Kempton preferred, as she said, to wear clothes that showed respect for her subjects: dress, jewelry, high heels.

A gifted self-promoter, she unveiled each new painting at a cocktail party in the exclusive Washington, D.C., Shoreham Hotel, with invitations to well-heeled potential customers. Her unerring blend of fashion and flamboyance put her on every gala guest list.

Although she was said to be Jewish by birth, Kempton’s greatest religious project was to guild the bridal altar and restore paintings in the famous Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration off Wall Street. Kempton proposed the project, sight unseen — and did it gratis.

The Rev. Norman Catir, rector at that time, remembers her restoration work: “They came out beautifully. And she was quick. She did it quickly and she was very adept.

“I worried about her,” he recalled. When she was doing paintings in the church she would get up on the ladder on those spindly high heels. She was at least 80.”

Catir isn’t aware that Kempton was ever baptized. Still, she is interred in the columbarium of the church.

“She forged her way. She was clearly a fighter. She found the opportunities and made a great success of herself,” Kristen Jasinski said.

Still, all she knows is shaped by the stories Greta Kempton wanted people to hear. Her estranged daughter is dead. So are her grandson and his wife, who left no children.

Complete control

Clay Bauske (pronounced BOUGH-skee), curator of the Harry S. Truman museum, first met Kempton while planning an exhibition of her work by the museum.

“The thing I noticed most about her was that she was very soft-spoken and gracious, but very opinionated,” Bouske said. “She could kill you with sweetness if she wanted to. Even if she was taking issue with what you said, it would be the equivalent of sitting down to tea and having a polite conversation.”

The walls of Kempton’s New York apartment, he said, were veritably plastered with her works, up to the ceiling. Stacks of studies and unfinished works filled her closets.

“Her earlier paintings, in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s definitely took after the old masters,” Bauske said. Even after she began moving into a more fluid style in the 1960s, he said, she retained a power over light and shadows.

Kempton’s subjects are often against a cumulus- bulked blue sky, or a wall of flecked darkness. Sometimes the backdrop is a wedge of lush garden, another subject she favored.

Her subjects’ eyes, however, all seem to hint at a secret bestowed by their creator. Kempton’s lone self-portrait, among the Jasinskis’ inventory, conveys that same sense of elusiveness.

“She purposely tried to keep a lot of her life in the shadows, I think — definitely, her younger years at least,” Bauske said.

Building a legacy

Polish-born former Chicagoan Wesley Jasinski recalled his fascination with Kempton’s portraits from when they first started appearing at auction. Kempton had bequeathed all her art and personal papers to the Truman library, but the library’s mission was to preserve Truman’s artifacts.

“They had sold 50 over the past 10 years and I bought probably 90 percent of them. So I had fallen in love with her works,” Jasinski recalled.

Then, to clear out needed storage space, the museum made him an offer. He bought the collection — and a 40-box mother lode of Greta Kempton’s papers.

Those, the Jasinskis hope, might unlock her well hidden heart.

Kristen Jasinski says she has sat down from time to time, trying to plumb its depth, which is detailed down to utility bills. It would take a full-time archivist a year, she estimates.

Zulette Catir, Rev. Catir’s wife, would second that. She recalls attempting to help Kempton arrange her papers in the artist’s waning years.

“We’d spread everything out, and then she’d say, ‘Let’s have lunch,’” Catir recalled. Somehow the sorting chore would never be undertaken.

The Jasinskis love having Kempton’s art star at The Knickerbocker, bestowing a sense of class on a family reunion or a wedding reception.

But they’d love for the building to also become a mecca for student trips, to see historic faces of the past century. They’d love for young artists to learn the art of portrait painting there.

Eventually they’d love to see Kempton’s art cared for in a museum. Kempton may elude their efforts to know her, but the Jasinskis know her art. And they believe in it.

The couple created a website, hoping to gather information from people who knew her, and donations to publish a biography.

“I think she would make a fascinating movie,” Wesley Jasinski said.

That will be easy, he and his wife say. The biggest challenge, by far, is to learn just who Greta Kempton is.

Harriet Howard Heithaus covers arts for the Daily News. Do you have an unusual story? Email her at harriet.heithaus@naplesnews.com or call 239-213-6091.