Untitled (Portrait of John Ashbery)

A jazz musician turned painter, Larry Rivers became known in the 1950s for his painterly brand of realism that combined a reverence for the old masters with experimentations à la de Kooning. Close to artists and poets such as Frank O'Hara, Jane Freilicher, Kenneth Koch, and Fairfield Porter, Rivers met John Ashbery in 1949 and the two remained friends throughout his life. This portrait, one of several Rivers made of Ashbery, was created in Paris, where both were living at the time. It is a characteristic example of Rivers' drawing style, in which smudging and erasures play as important a role in the final image as the pencil marks.