About the artist:

Elizabeth Shoumatoff (1888-1980) was an American painter who was most well known for painting the Unfinished Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Shoumatoff was born into an aristocratic family in tsarist Russia, and emigrated to the United States in 1917, eventually making her home on Long Island. Her extraordinary talent for portraiture brought commissions from some of the most illustrious families in America, Great Britain and Europe. Her clients included members of the Frick, du Pont, Mellon, Woodruff and Firestone families, plus the royal family of Luxembourg. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sitting for her at Warm Springs, Georgia when he suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945. When she was working he said that he had "a terrific headache." She died in 1980.