Robert Wadsworth Grafton
Grafton painted portraits of a great many noted men in public and university life. Studied at AIC; Academie Julian, Paris; Holland; England.
Saddle and Sirloin Club 1
More works in the Saddle & Sirloin Club Portrait Collection today are by Robert Grafton than any other artist: 160. Born in Chicago in 1876, Robert Wadsworth Grafton studied at the Chicago Academy of Design and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before traveling overseas to study at the Académie Julian in Paris, as well as in the Netherlands and England. After his return to Chicago, he became involved in several artists’ organizations, including the Palette and Chisel Club, becoming its president in 1906.
Grafton moved to Michigan City, Indiana, andspent winters in New Orleans between 1916
and 1920, painting with his friend Louis Oscar Griffin. There, the two collaborated on murals in the St. Charles Hotel in 1917. Grafton painted many other murals, too, including those for the Tippecanoe County (Indiana) Courthouse, the Illinois State Capitol, the Lafayette School in Chicago, the Hotel Rumely in La Porte, Indiana, and the First National Bank in Elkhart, Indiana. Perhaps best known for his portraits, however, Grafton depicted three Indiana governors and two U. S. presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Records indicate that both presidents sat for the painter while in the White House. He became an official Saddle & Sirloin Club portraitist around 1915, and then was later commissioned to repaint the portraits destroyed by the 1934 fire.
For the last two years of his life, Robert Grafton painted with tremendous speed, returning 162 of the lost portraits to Chicago, and painting two new inductees during the same period. (Four of these works are no longer in the collection.) His signature is visible on only one, the likeness of Frederick Pabst, Sr. His own portrait, a selfportrait, was hung in the collection to honor his accomplishment and contribution. Robert Grafton died in 1936.
Saddle and Sirloin Club 2
A series of biographical sketches of the 347 personalities honored by having their portraits hung in the Saddle and Sirloin gallery at the Kentucky Exposition Center, Louisville, Kentucky. The collection remembers the 347 leaders who have made major contributions to the livestock industry. Founded in 1903 and continues to this day, the portrait gallery is the largest collection of quality portraits by noted artists in the world devoted to a single industry.
All of the portraits hanging in the Club at the time of the 1934 Chicago Stock Yards fire were destroyed. Within a week after the fire, Fredrick H. Prince, the chairman of the Union Stock Yards and Transit Company, commissioned Robert F. Grafton to begin repainting the portraits lost. In 18 months, before his death, he completed a total of 164. Othmar Hoffler was selected to succeed him as the official artist of the Club. Other artists whose portrait works are represented in the gallery include Joseph Allworthy, Arvid Nyholm, Benjamin Kanne and Ernest Klempner. More recently portraits by Raymond Kinstler, Tom Orlando, Tom Phillips, Stewart Halstead, Walter Wilson, Richard Halstead, James Fox, John Boyd Martin and Istvan Nyikos have been added.
