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Hope Family Portrait

A family portrait with a man in a tan suit and red hair holding a small sculpture beside a woman in pink with red hair. There are six children: a girl in a black dress with red curly hair, a boy with crossed arms and a striped shirt, two young blond boys with a dog, a young blonde girl lying on the floor, and a boy with glasses standing behind the man.

A family portrait with a man in a tan suit and red hair holding a small sculpture beside a woman in pink with red hair. There are six children: a girl in a black dress with red curly hair, a boy with crossed arms and a striped shirt, two young blond boys with a dog, a young blonde girl lying on the floor, and a boy with glasses standing behind the man.

Artist Max Beckmann (German, 1884–1950)
Title Hope Family Portrait (Gruppenbild Hope)
Date 1950
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions Framed: 82 × 36 1/2 × 1 1/2 in. (208.3 × 92.7 × 3.8 cm)
Support: 80 1/4 x 35 in. (203.8 x 88.9 cm)
Credit Line Gift of the Hope Family, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 2002.73

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About this Work

One of the most important German artists of the twentieth century, Max Beckmann was an insightful portraitist, instilling his subjects with psychological depth. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1937, Beckmann settled in Amsterdam, and in 1947 immigrated to the United States, where he had accepted a position at Washington University in St. Louis. During his three years in the United States, Beckmann painted portraits of his many new American friends and patrons. Henry Hope, chair of Indiana University’s fine arts department, commissioned this portrait in 1950. The painting, depicting Henry and Sally Hope and their six children, was based on sketches Beckmann completed during a three-day visit to Bloomington in April 1950.


Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

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"Hope Family Portrait | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2024. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=2002.73