Bjorn Egeli. Portrait of Clara. Oil on Canvas.

Norwegian-born American 1900-1984. Egeli's success at the Corcoran and his many successful commissions resulted in a one-man exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in early 1936. The exhibit of 34 portraits launched his career. Over the next nearly fifty years he continued to paint portraits. This includes two U.S. Presidents (Richard M. Nixon and Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Capitol Hill Club,) several Supreme Court Justices (Melville Weston Fuller and James Clark McReynolds), leaders in medicine (Mayo Brothers, Charles Horace Mayo and William James Mayo for the Mayo Clinic, and Paul Henry Streit for Walter Reed Army Institute of Research), industrialists (Lamont DuPont for DuPont and James F. Donovan, among others), military leaders (Adm. Jules James, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Gen. Henry L. Benning, and others), political leaders (Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, Thomas Hunter Lowe and others) and educators (Canon Albert H. Lucas, of ...