Aline Fruhauf – MIdcentury Tastemakers

Aline Fruhauf
Muriel King (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Louise Barnes Gallagher (fashion designer)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Helen Cramp Cookman (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Aline Bernstein (stage designer)
1943
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Clare Potter (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Fira Benenson (fashion designer)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Nettie Rosenstein (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Omar Kiam (fashion designer)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Tom Brigance (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
William Pahlmann (interior designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Sally Victor (milliner)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Lilly Daché (milliner)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Pola Stout (textile designer)
1941
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
James Berryman (cartoonist)
1949
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Duncan Phillips (art collector)
1949
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

from Santarém

Of course, I may be remembering it all wrong

after, after – how many years?

That golden evening I really wanted to go no farther;

more than anything else I wanted to stay while

in that conflux of two great rivers, Tapajós, Amazon,

grandly, silently flowing, flowing east.

Suddenly there'd been houses, people, and lots of mongrel

riverboats skittering back and forth

under a sky of gorgeous, under-lit clouds,

with everything gilded, burnished along one side,

and everything bright, cheerful, casual – or so it looked.

I liked the place; I liked the idea of the place.

Two rivers. Hadn't two rivers sprung

from the Garden of Eden? No, that was four

and they'd diverged. Here only two

and coming together. Even if one were tempted

to literary interpretations

such as: life/death, right/wrong, male/female

– such notions would have resolved, dissolved, straight off

in that watery, dazzling dialectic. 

In front of the church, the Cathedral, rather,

there was a modest promenade and a belvedere

about to fall into the river,

stubby palms, flamboyants like pans of embers,

buildings one story high, stucco, blue or yellow,

and one house faced with azulejos, buttercup yellow. 

The street was deep in dark gold river sand

damp from the ritual afternoon rain,

and teams of zebus plodded, gentle, proud,

and blue, with down-curved horns and hanging ears,

pulling carts with solid wheels.

The zebus' hooves, the people's feet

waded in golden sand,

dampered by golden sand,

so that almost the only sounds

were creaks and shush, shush, shush.

Two rivers full of crazy shipping – people

all apparently changing their minds, embarking, 

disembarking, rowing clumsy dories.

(After the Civil War some Southern families

came here; here they could still own slaves.

They left occasional blue eyes, English names,

and oars. No other place, no one

on all the Amazon's four thousand miles

does anything but paddle.)

– Elizabeth Bishop (1978)