At 7:33 on July 11, 2020, I sent the following e-mail to the President of the United States.
“Dear Mr. President: May I suggest a statue of President Eisenhower be included in your proposed garden. Ike was an artist who rendered a hundred or more paintings while living in your home. He helped defeat the Nazis. He bid the Monument Men to return stolen art to rightful owners. He was a good friend of art dealer, Howard Young, who is the uncle of my kin, Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor.”
For two days I have had enlightened conversations with my friends, Keith, Ray, and Merna, who live in Springfield. We talked about how polarized our Nation has become. We have always sought the middle ground and looked for what we have in common. Yesterday we talked about Howard Young’s friendship with Ike. They hunted, fished, and swam together. They also played poker with rich and powerful men. Three hours later I discover President Eisenhower was a prolific artist who may have seen my kin Liz Taylor on several occasions. They could have fished together. My years of research have struck the motherload in regards of establishing the Artistic Dynasty that is made up of family members – the rival biographers did not find!
I believe Eisenhower is above the fray that has toppled monuments and works of art, because he destroyed the Master Race the destroyers of Caucasian culture and many minorities that were seen as inferior.
After the war President Eisenhower sought the company of men who come from humble roots. How much of an influence Howard had on Ike’s art is to be discovered. I have been puzzled as to why Michael Jackson did a drawing of George Washington and the front door to the White House. Liz encouraged Michael to take up art. Did she tell him about her connection to President Eisenhower – the artist?
Liz’s son married Aileen Getty whose family has amassed one of the largest collections of art in the world. I am going write the Getty Art Museum and suggest they have a show of Ike’s work. My late brother-in-law did the mural at the Getty Villa. My late sister, Christine Rosamond Benton was a famous artist. I was her teacher.
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
https://rosamondpress.com/2013/11/28/michael-jackson-a-closeted-artist/
https://www.getty.edu/visit/villa/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_Villa
http://rosamond.com/collections/33008
The only true response to art is to look with an eye like that of a child: unprejudiced, unbiased, clear, and uncommitted. When it is the art of a celebrity, this ideal, always almost unobtainable, becomes progressively difficult. Can we see the work in the dazzle of the artist’s aura? When the paintings of Noel Coward come to auction, they do well enough, but are the buyers interested in Coward himself rather than in his work, bright, confident, and attractive though it is? When Prince Charles, who is a seriously good painter, sends his work to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, where it shows to great effect, he sends it under a nom-de-plume, precisely so as to allow the selectors to choose or reject only on artistic merit. The prime example is Winston Churchill, a man whom history has already anointed as great. Is it really possible to make an objective judgment of his pictures?
Churchill the painter, of course, is the closest equivalent we have of Dwight D. Eisenhower as painter. It may well have been seeing his friend at work, lost in the joy of his pigments, that first turned Eisenhower’s mind to the possibility of painting himself. His immediate spur, we know, was observing the artist Thomas E. Stephens painting a portrait of Mamie Eisenhower during their all too brief stay at Columbia University. The future president, at the time only president of the university, was intrigued, and his mind, ever restless and emulative, became fascinated by the challenge of himself “copying” what was before him. One of the little-realized facts about Eisenhower was the intensity of his need to excel. Ike looked laid-back and affable, and indeed he was, a delightful man. But at heart he was determined always to be in command, never to be bested. This ambition showed with painful rawness in his boyhood, challenging his elder brothers. He learned to hide it under his easy smile and genuine charm, but one can quite imagine him studying Mamie’s portrait and feeling determined to see if he could find within himself skills to match the artist’s.
Before Stephens made his visit to the Eisenhowers, the president seems to have had no encounter with art except as the hobby of Winston Churchill. Since golf was Eisenhower’s hobby, and always would be, his interest in Churchillian landscapes was benignly detached. After the war though, with time on his hands, this strange activity entered significantly into his own space, as it were. While Mamie and Stephens toured the house to find the best place to hang her portrait, Eisenhower got his aide, John Moaney, to help him stretch a white dust cloth for a canvas to the bottom of a box. Then—one can imagine his puzzled but dogged expression—he tried to copy the picture. He showed the group what he had done, he says, describing his efforts as “weird and wonderful to behold,” adding that “we all laughed heartily.”1
Painting was not something Eisenhower wanted to be good at or, perhaps, thought he could be good at. Stephens sent him a complete painting kit, which Ike appreciated but thought a “sheer waste of money,” something the boy from a poor home could never accept comfortably. Maybe it was this innate frugality—the desire not to waste a gift—that spurred him to practice. Eisenhower was convinced that to become a painter, he lacked the one thing necessary, “ability.”2
But he was interested: he enjoyed experimenting. He would not dream of painting, of course, if there were a chance for golf or, for that matter, if he could find bridge partners or set up a poker game. (His legendary skill at poker, said to have added appreciably to his military earnings throughout his career, meant there were few partners to hand.) But at 58, the age in which painting became a part, however tenuous, of his life, the physical demands of golf and his weakening heart made his idle hours more frequent. The Kennedy successors said that Eisenhower had never read a book, which annoyed Mamie, who knew how assiduously he had pored over military history. But that was reading with a purpose: information a soldier needed. Those days were over, and as president, he read little more than Westerns. Painting, with its inbuilt challenge, its very status of being something he was not naturally good at, was a far more attractive option.
Writing to Churchill in 1950, Eisenhower said, “I have a lot of fun since I took it up, in my somewhat miserable way, your hobby of painting. I have had no instruction, have no talent, and certainly no justification for covering nice, white canvas with the kind of daubs that seem constantly to spring from my brushes. Nevertheless, I like it tremendously, and in fact, have produced two or three things that 1 like enough to keep.”3
But for Churchill, painting genuinely mattered. He had an outdoor hobby, bricklaying, but that satisfied him far less than the aesthetic stimulus he derived from gazing at something beautiful and trying to make visible his personal reaction to it. For Eisenhower, the excitement was in the manual skill in producing a copy, usually of a photograph or a magazine reproduction. (If the weather was fine enough to sit and paint, it was fine enough for golf: no contest!) It was simply the intellectual puzzle of it, how to make on his own canvas what another artist or photographer had captured. His favorite subject was his daughter-in-law with his two grandchildren, but he branched out freely into depictions of landscape, however secondhand, and buildings, with the occasional portrait (remember, copied). He described his portrait paintings as “magnificent audacity,” and burned most of them.5
Eisenhower was reticent about his deep emotions. (Of the supreme sorrow of his life, the death in babyhood of his son Icky, he never spoke.) We catch a rare glimpse of his inner nature when we read, in a letter of late adolescence, how he felt about the loss, through injury, of the football career that had been his driving passion. “Life seemed to have little meaning. A need to excel was gone.”6
https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/finding-aids/pdf/young-howard-papers.pdf
http://www.dameelizabethtaylor.com/animals.html
Nor was he so unskilled. His first encounter with a professional artist, at Columbia, led to his being given the tools for serious work in this field. Obviously, though he may have laughed with Ike, Stephens was impressed.
What Eisenhower was to produce in the last short third of his life is work that still gives the impartial onlooker pleasure. A daub irritates; these paintings, simple and earnest, rather cause us to wonder at the hidden depths of this reticent president. Notice the scenes to which he was drawn: they are all of the peaceful countryside, a symbol of the unspoiled America in which he had grown to manhood. Naturally, experienced traveler that he was, there are foreign scenes, too: Ann Hathaway’s Cottage in England, a French garden, or an Alpine scene. But he concentrates on views like Rolling Wooded Hills, painted in Denver in 1955. He had a special affection for hills, and here they gently rise and fall. He had an affection, too, for tall trees, often the subject of presidential doodling in the Oval Office. In this work we see two, green and gold, and surging toward them a bright pool of bluebonnets, dazzling in the sunshine. He admitted to a great love of color, and it is delightfully apparent in all his best pictures. I have a fondness for the Mountain Fall Scene, where it is not hills but mountains that seize his attention, splendid peaks, rising in icy splendor, blue and shadowed, while the foreground is alive with the brightness of an American fall. Two small trees are a gleaming yellow, while behind them another two, equally spindly, are deep pink, tipped with crimson. If we really look at this mountain path framed with evergreens, we begin to notice, as the artist did, many stray touches of color, yellows and pinks, that tie the whole picture together tonally. Who but the artist himself would dare call this a “daub”? Not great art. needless to say, but pleasing art, art that has a lyrical sweetness to it, however unassumingly expressed.
Eisenhower was interested in undamaged nature — perhaps the effect of years as a soldier? — and in people. To me, the nature studies are more effective, but sometimes he gets a face exactly right. One of Mamie’s favorite pictures was Mexican, which Ike painted in 1953 from an advertisement. He has caught the man’s vigor, the masculine radiance of his smile, the swagger of his sombrero, the dazzling flash of his teeth against the sunburn of his face. He is interesting, too, on Abraham Lincoln, not so much in the traditional bearded Lincoln, well depicted though it is. He gave this image to the White House staff as their 1953 Christmas card, and I imagine it is still cherished. But there is a more imaginative projection in Melancholy Lincoln, taken from a photograph of the young lawyer, clean shaven and yet inexplicably sad. Eisenhower did not paint to “express” his inner self; he curbed his imagination and resolutely imitated the reproduction before him. Yet there seems to me a personal note in this work, as if he were subliminally seeing in Lincoln’s melancholy a distant awareness of the burden of the presidency.
Because we are so conditioned to overreact to celebrity, most of us will have come to Eisenhower’s paintings with a readiness to scoff. But try to be impartial, and you will be very pleasantly surprised. One final irony. President Eisenhower was a conservative, in art as in many other areas, and he had no time at all for the avant-garde. He felt modem art was morally wrong. Speaking on May Day, 1962, he grieved that “our very art forms [are] so changed that we seem to have forgotten the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci” and went on to excoriate, with unusual eloquence, works like “a piece of canvas that looks like a broken-down Tin Lizzie, loaded with paint, has been driven over it.” “What has happened to our concept of beauty and decency and morality? ”8
Here comes the irony. Take up any magazine of contemporary art, or look through a Christie’s or Sotheby’s catalog of such a sale. You will find that, for some of the best-selling contemporary artists, their aim seems to be to create what looks like a “daub.”
The effect of clumsiness that Eisenhower so fought against, untrained and inexperienced as he was, is now sought after by men and women, highly trained and deeply experienced. Their works adorn the walls of galleries that would laugh at the very thought of hanging an Eisenhower. Yet who is the truer artist, these mischievous painters who play with their skill, or Eisenhower, thrilled by color, eager to understand how to create, humble but persevering?
“Young had one and he was immediately off to Oklahoma. While there he played poker with Harry Sinclair, Frank Phillips and Bill Skelly, and a new chapter in his career opened–investments. It opened with investments in oil.”
https://rosamondpress.com/2013/11/23/my-kindred-elizabeth-rosemond-taylor/
http://newsarch.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/OHGUERNS/2008-“11/1226675696
I am looking for descendants of Philip Rosemond and Moses Morton Rosemond who lived in Guernsey County, OH in the mid-1800s. This family descended from a James Rosemond who lived in County Leitrim, Ireland in the early 1700s.
Other members of this same family settled in Lanark, Ontario, Canada.
The southern Rosamond family is also said to be descended from this same
family, as are the Rosamond families in Australia and New Zealand. I am
trying to tie all the branches of the family together. The information on
the family in Guernsey County, OH is shown below. I’d appreciate hearing
from anyone who has any information regarding this family.
The reference for the earlier generations of this family is the booklet “The
History of the Rosemond Family” by Leland Eugene Rosemond, 1939.
Mary Morton Rosemond of Iowa
When I read the following this morning, the book, and movie ‘Gone With The Wind’ came to mind.
“The couple had nine children; eight girls and but one son — Martin — who served with Lucas County boys in Company C of the 13th Iowa Infantry and died in service in 1862. When James Roseman died in 1887, there was nobody by the name of Roseman left in the county.”
The Rosemond Art Dynasty
Augustus John, Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher, c1920. Portrait of John (1878-1961). Illustration from “Story of the British Nation”, Volume IV, by Walter Hutchinson, (London, c1920s).
“Howard Young was as wise in his art dealings as he was investing. His greatest achievement was his discovery of the “Lost El Greco”–“Christ Healing The Blind.” This painting now hangs in the Metropolitan Art Museum.”
Howard Young and Mabel Rosemond had no children. Therefore, I splice and attache all the creative history to this Rose Line. Howard promoted the artist Augustus John, and was the best friend of Victor Cazalet, who also had no children. He was Liz’s godfather. I delare myself the Caretaker of their artistic history – and then some. Because Bryan Mclean had no children, I consider myself the caretaker of his family history. George Mclean was the godfather of Liz’s son.
https://www.geni.com/people/Philip-Rosemond/6000000003263482770
“Young’s good friend was President Dwight D. Eisenhower and he, too, spent time in the area. “There are several pictures, him and Howard Young would fish here and also President Eisenhower’s brothers would come up here,” said Solberg.”
President Bush, Obama, and others are confronting President Trump about his embracing Neo-Nazis, and Neo-Confederate Christian Co-Terrorists, that President Eisenhower warned about.
https://rosamondpress.com/2013/11/26/artistic-line-of-the-rosemond-sisters/
Mrs. Elizabeth Mary Taylor’s sister (Mabel Rosemond) had married Howard Young, a famous artist who had galleries in St. Louis, then New York, and London.
Talitha Pol married John Paul Getty, Her father was Willem Jilts Pol, a painter who subsequently married Poppet John daughter of the painter. Tlaitha is related to Peter and Ian Fleming, and my kin, Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, who descends from the Dutch families of Rover and Rosemondt. We are looking at a modern-day Dutch Bohemian Renaissance!
Ian Fleming’s novels generated more money from his books made into movies than Dan Brown, and was a real spy working with real codes.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2017
| A |
Howard Young Northwoods BenefactorIt wasn’t until the will of S. Howard Young was made public on Aug. 15, 1972, that residents of the Lakeland area began to understand how deeply this unusual man loved the Northwoods of Wisconsin and the people who reside within it’s boundaries.On this day in 1972 they learned that Howard Young had bequeathed approximately $20 million for a health center so that the area would have the finest facilities and continue to attract outstanding doctors of the caliber that had joined the staff of the first hospital–Lakeland Memorial Hospital.The will further stated that the “net income is to be paid in perpetuity to the hospital to be used by it for it own general purposes and that $7 million be used only for the purpose of constructing, equipping, furnishing and opening a new main hospital.”Indeed, Howard Young had a love affair with the Lakeland area that spanned some 65 years, and the impact of the love was reaffirmed on Saturday, June 18, 1977, with the dedication of the Howard Young Medical Center. It will continue to be reaffirmed, ad infinitum, through its operation.Stephen Howard Young was born in Belle Center, Ohio, on May 22, 1878, the eldest of five children who would eventually comprise the family of Philip and Mary Funk Young. His father was a highway construction supervisor.It seemed as if Howard Young was born with great ambition. His mother soon realized that his ambitions far surpassed anything that Belle Center had to offer, and so it was with her blessing that he left his home at age 10 to make his way in the world.His business career began simply, delivering for both a laundry and a paper route. When he was 15 years of age he turned to chromolithography (the process of lithographing in colors), a relatively new innovation in 1893. His first operation was in Anderson, Ind., and as his business flourished he opened offices in Cincinnati and Lima, Ohio, plus Peoria, Ill.By 1896, at the age of 18, Howard Young had amassed a fortune of $400,000. This was also the year of the panic and he lost it all.He began again…By now he had decided his future lay in oil paintings. He contracted for the services of several prominent portrait artists in the area. Then, following an obituary notice, he would contact the family and sell them oil paintings from the snapshots they provided of the deceased. They sold at $2,000 each.One of his clients then asked him to select and buy paintings for her home, paying a commission of $300 for each one. This moved Howard Young into a career as an art dealer.In 1900, Young married Mabel Rosemund of Springfield, Ill., and moved to St. Louis where he established his headquarters. His wife preceded him in death in 1955. There were no children of the marriage.His business continued to flourish. Then one day he learned of a man in Bartlesville, Okla., who was looking for a Remington to purchase. Young had one and he was immediately off to Oklahoma. while there he played poker with Harry Sinclair, Frank Phillips and Bill Skelly, and a new chapter in his career opened–investments. It opened with investments in oil.In St. Louis, Young became friendly with the Busch and Lambert families. He bought shares of Anheuser-Busch stock that he never sold. He was a wise investor and unloaded a great deal of stock just before the crash in 1929. His one regret was that he sold his IBM stock too soon, for although he made a fine profit it was nothing compared to what it would have been if he had held it.He was as wise in his art dealings as he was investing. His greatest achievement was his discovery of the “Lost El Greco”–“Christ Healing The Blind.” This painting now hangs in the Metropolitan Art Museum.In his art dealings, Young had one regret also. He bought a Van Gogh for $5,000, sold it for $10,000, and shortly before his death it sold for $850,000.In 1907, Howard Young developed a nervous ailment. His doctors recommended a summer vacation in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, and thus began his love affair with Lakeland area.Howard Young was an art dealer for 75 years. His only partner was his nephew, Francis Taylor–Elizabeth Taylor’s father, who died in 1968. He did have a multitude of friends and he considered Dwight D. Eisenhower one of his closest. He played an instrumental part in Eisenhower’s entering the 1952 presidential race. He arranged a reception for Eisenhowers with Scripps Howard newspaper executives and it was at this reception that Ike obtained their support. Without this he probably never would have entered politics. Howard Young revealed a little of his true feelings for the Lakeland area when, on election night, after learning of his victory, Eisenhower turned to him and asked him where he would like to be ambassador. Young’s reply–“in Minocqua, Woodruff and Boulder Junction.” In later years, after Eisenhower had suffered his heart attack. Young built a special track down the hill from his home to the lake. It car carried Eisenhower for his daily swims that he loved so well. Without it, Ike could not have negotiated the steep hill. During their years of friendship, Eisenhower presented Howard Young with three of his signed paintings. These, along with their correspondence, were donated to the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene, Kansas. Young was an avid sportsman. He loved golf and founded the Minocqua country Club, and he was an excellent skeet shooter; but hunting and fishing were probably his favorite spots. He kept homes in Florida and Connecticut, but Minocqua was his favorite retreat, for here he could indulge in all his favorite sports. Howard Young died at the age of 94 on June 23, 1972. He died among his favorite art treasures in his galleries in the Hotel Pierre in New York City. His remains lie in Detroit…but his heart and memories are alive in the Lakeland area. |
ep-wilson-accuses-white-house-chief-of-staff-of-%E2%80%98character-assassination%E2%80%99-calls-for-apology/ar-AAtRMSy?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
“We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism, forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America,” Mr. Bush said. “We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade, forgetting that conflict, instability and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism. We’ve seen the return of isolationist sentiments, forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places.”
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
“Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book…”
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
Godfather to Elizabeth Taylor[edit]
Cazalet, who had a passion for fine art, became a close friend of American art gallery owners Francis Taylor and his wife Sara, parents of Elizabeth, after they had moved from the U.S. to London in 1936.[1] Cazalet let the Taylor family, who were also Christian Scientists, spend their weekends in a separate 16th century cottage on his estate in Kent.[1] He wanted them to think of England as their new home.[22]:13
He gave 4-year-old Elizabeth a horse named Betty as a gift, which she would ride bareback throughout the property.[1] The Taylors asked him to be her godfather, after which he became an important influence during her early life.[1] At one time while Elizabeth suffered the first of many near-fatal illnesses, Elizabeth begged her mother to “please call Victor and ask him to come and sit with me.” Cazalet then drove ninety miles through thick fog to be at her side.[24] When he arrived, recalled her mother, “Victor sat on the bed and held Elizabeth in his arms and talked to her about God,” and soon after the fever had broken.[22]:14
At a lunch with Churchill in April 1939, Cazalet learned that a war was coming, and was permitted by Churchill to inform others.[22]:24 Cazalet, concerned for the Taylor family’s safety, urged Francis to close his art gallery as soon as possible and return with his family to America. Because of the time needed to vacate the gallery, he suggested that Sara and his children should be sent back alone where Francis could later join them. They took his advice and eventually ended up in Los Angeles where he established a new gallery.[1]
As Cazalet was an acquaintance of screen actor DeWolf Hopper and his former wife, Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper, he sent a letter of introduction on behalf of Elizabeth to Ms. Hopper, to help 7-year-old Elizabeth become involved in acting.[1][24] Hopper met with Elizabeth and Sara and offered to help. Months later, Cazalet wrote in his diary for 16 April 1941, “Imagine excitement of Taylors. Elizabeth has a contract for seven years with a big cinema group.”[22]:33
http://dearoldhollywood.blogspot.com/2011/08/on-vacation-north-woods-part-two.html
http://dearoldhollywood.blogspot.com/2011/08/on-vacation-north-woods-part-two.html
S. Howard Young, one of the world’s wealthiest art dealers, died yesterday in his galleries in the Pierre Hotel after a brief illness. He was 94 years old on May 22.
Mr. Young was a close friend of the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower and was a great uncle of the actress Elizabeth Taylor. Her father, Francis Taylor, had been Mr. Young’s only partner in a 75‐year career. Mr. Taylor, who died in 1968, was Mr. Young’s nephew.
The art dealer was a resident of Miami Beach and had sum mer homes in Ridgefield, Conn., and Minocqua, Wis.
It was during a weekend visit with Mr. Young at Ridgefield in 1952 that General Eisenhower, then president of Columbia University, decided to enter the Presidential race. Also present were Bob Considine and Frank Farrell, the newspaper colum nists.
Mr. Considine advised the General that the Hearst news papers would support the Re publican nomination of Gen. Douglas MacArthur against Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio. Mr. Farrell told the general that he thought the Scripps Howard newspapers’ editors might be willing to support him.
Soon afterward, Mr. Young arranged a reception here in the St. Regis Hotel for 200 guests. There the General ex changed views with the late Roy W. Howard, head of Scripps‐Howard. The organiza tion, in an unusual move, agreed to support the General before the convention.
Offered an Embassy
Mr. Young was with the gen eral on Election Night in No vember of 1952. When the voting trend became apparent, the general remarked, “Looks as though I’m going to be the next President.” Mr. Young re plied, “Yes, and it looks as though I have lost my best fishing and shooting partner.”
The general smiled and asked, “Where do you want to be an ambassador, Howard?”
Mr. Young shook his head and replied, “How about me being your ambassador to Boulder Junction [Colorado] or Minocqua or Woodruff in Wis consin?”
The art dealer’s house in Wisconsin is on a ridge over looking a lake. The General liked to swim there, but after his heart attack he was unable to handle the steep 140 ‐foot climb back to the house.
As a surprise for his friend, Mr. Young built a four‐passen ger funicular between the house and the diving board. Five years ago Mr. Young got into the funicular to descend to the lake. Partway down, the cable slipped and the car crashed, rocketing Mr. Young 24 feet into a tree. His only injury was a cut scalp.
Over the years the General gave three of his paintings to his friend, and last summer Mr. Young gave the paintings and the General’s letters to the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene, Kan.
Left Home at 10
Stephen Howard Young was born in Belle Center, Ohio, on May 22, 1878, the oldest son of Philip Young, a highway con struction supervisor, and the former Mary Funk.
At the age of 10, the young ster left home and started his career with a laundry and a newspaper route.
Although he had little formal education, he was an omnivo rous reader. It was not until just a few months ago that his eyes became oversensitive to light on a printed page. He ac quired an Oxonian command of English, a cosmopolite’s sense of humor and a reputation as a raconteur.
At 15, he became interested in chromolithography and sold prints in the Midwest. By the age of 18 he had amassed a fortune of $400,000. It was 1896, the year a panic of major proportions shook the nation, and the young man lost every thing in it.
He started over again, this time with oil paintings. He sought out good portrait artists, read obituary notices, obtained photographs of deceased mem beers of affluent families, had oil portraits painted and sold them to the families at $2,000 each.
One day a woman showed, him some catalogues of well known art works and asked him to try to buy some for her, offering a commission of $300 for each purchase. This began his career as an art dealer.
When he was 22 he met and married Mabel Rosemund of Springfield, Ill. Mrs. Young died in 1955. There were no children. During their early married life, they lived in St. Louis. There Mr. Young learned of a man who wanted to buy a Frederic Remington painting. Mr. Young then owned Reming ton’s “The Overland Stage” and took it to his prospect.
En route, he got into a poker game with three oilmen, Harry Sinclair, Frank Phillips and Bill Skelly. They became close friends and Mr. Young became a highly successful investor in oil.
Mr. Sinclair told Mr. Young that he and his business be longed in New York. He gave him a check to set up here, taking an I.O.U. in return. Mr. Young never cashed the check, but he took the advice and moved his galleries.
Mr. Young also bought Florida Power & Light stock after a visit to Florida in 1915, when he foresaw the Miami area’s growth as a resort and bought a home there.
One of his worst mistakes, Mr. Young once recalled, was buying a Van Gogh painting in Rotterdam in the early 1930’s for $5,000 and selling it soon afterward for $10,000. The same painting brought $850,000 at a recent Parke‐Bernet auction.
Tilted With Duveen
Mr. Young engaged in spec tacular art duels with Sir Joseph Duveen, his most serious com petitor. He had uncanny luck in guessing when Sir Joseph was obligated to buy a painting and often, without reason, would force the bid up.
In a 1928 auction Mr. Young stopped bidding on Gains. borough’s “The Harvest Wag on” at $350,000. Sir Joseph bought it for $360,000.
Perhaps Mr. Young’s biggest achievement in art was his dis covery of the lost El Greco en titled “Christ Healing the Blind.” It was attributed to Tin toretto when Mr. Young bought it at an auction. He had it authenticated at The Prado, in Madrid. The painting is now in the Charles Wrightsman col lection.
On one occasion he bought a painting of the Duchess‐Coun tess of Sutherland, supposed to have been a Romney, and sold it to Lawrence P. Fisher of Detroit, for $150,000. When it was learned that the real por trait was still held by the Suth erland family and that the painting he had bought was a copy, Mr. Young returned Mr. Fisher’s money and got his own back from the sellers.
Mr. Young was a horseman, a golfer, an archer and a skeet shot prize‐winner as well as a hunter and fisherman.
He was a founder of the Minocqua Country Club and a member, of the Turf & Field Clubs at the Hialeah, and Gulf Stream tracks. He also was one of the earlier members of the Indian Creek Club, and he belonged to the Surf Club and the Bath Club. In New York be was a member of the Metro politan Club and the Lotos Club.
His only survivor is a sister in Detroit.
A funeral service will be held Monday at 10:30 A.M. in the William E. Hamilton Fu neral Chapel in Detroit.
In 1900, Young married Mabel Rosemund of Springfield, Ill., and moved to St. Louis where he established his headquarters. His wife preceded him in death in 1955. There were no children of the marriage.
His business continued to flourish. Then one day he learned of a man in Bartlesville, Okla., who was looking for a Remington to purchase. Young had one and he was immediately off to Oklahoma. while there he played poker with Harry Sinclair, Frank Phillips and Bill Skelly, and a new chapter in his career opened–investments. It opened with investments in oil.
In St. Louis, Young became friendly with the Busch and Lambert families. He bought shares of Anheuser-Busch stock that he never sold. He was a wise investor and unloaded a great deal of stock just before the crash in 1929. His one regret was that he sold his IBM stock too soon, for although he made a fine profit it was nothing compared to what it would have been if he had held it.
He was as wise in his art dealings as he was investing. His greatest achievement was his discovery of the “Lost El Greco”–“Christ Healing The Blind.” This painting now hangs in the Metropolitan Art Museum.
In his art dealings, Young had one regret also. He bought a Van Gogh for $5,000, sold it for $10,000, and shortly before his death it sold for $850,000.
Francis Lenn Taylor was born 28 Dec 1897 in Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois, the son of Francis Marion Taylor by his wife Elizabeth Mary Rosemond. The family is living in the town of Cherokee in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, where his father, also named Francis “Frank” is listed in the 1910 U.S. Federal Census, as a salesman in a dry goods store. C. David Heymann in his “Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor” states that his father “operated the local general store” (p13).
Sarah married 23 Oct 1926 in New York City, New York to Francis Lenn Taylor, whereupon she retired from the stage. In Jul 1927, Francis and Sara Taylor are living at 55 55th Street. Sailing from Southampton, arriving in New York City 13 Dec 1927 I find: “Francis Taylor, Sara” then living at “55 W 55th Street, New York City”. Sailing from Southampton 15 Jul 1928, arriving in New York City, I find: “Francis Taylor, Sara” then living at “35 West 55th Street, New York City”. The exact date or even year that they relocated to London, is not yet known to me but on 4 Dec 1929, sailing from Southampton and arriving in New York City 12 Dec 1929 I find “Francis Lenn Taylor, born Springfield, Illinois 28 Dec 1897; Sara W Taylor, born Arkansas City, Kansas 21 Aug 1895; and Howard Francis Taylor, 5 months old, (birthplace not specified); Address in U.S.: Madison Hotel, New York City”
On 9 Dec 1930, sailing from Southampton and arriving in New York City, I find: “Francis Taylor, Sara, and Howard” all then living at “2 East 70th Street, New York City”. On 19 Jul 1934 sailing from Southampton, arriving in New York City, I find: “Francis Taylor, Sarah, Howard and Elizabeth” all then living at “677 5th Avenue, New York City”. We get the proof that Howard and Elizabeth were both born in London on 20 Nov 1936, sailing from Southampton, arriving in New York City : “Francis Taylor, Sarah, Howard born 27 Jun 1929 London, and Elizabeth born 27 Feb 1932 London” then living at “2 E 70th Street, New York City”.
Arriving in Southampton Mar 1937 from New York : “Francis L Taylor, Art Dealer; Sara, Howard and Elizabeth” then living at “8 Wildwood Road, London, NW11”. Sailing from Southampton, arriving in New York City, 27 Apr 1939 I find: “Sara W Taylor, Howard, Elizabeth” all then living at “1719 Fairview Ave, San Gabriel, California.” In the 1946 California Voter’s Registration in Beverly Hills I find : “Francis L Taylor, Mrs Sara S Taylor, 703 N Elm Dr” both listed as Republican. Sailing from Southampton, arriving in New York City, 9 Sep 1947 I find: “Sara Taylor, Elizabeth” then living at “703 Elm Drive, Beverley Hills, California”. They are still listed there through 1954, still both listed as Republican. In Apr 1958, Francis and Sara went together to London for a month.
Sara died at age 99 on 11 Sep 1994 in Palm Springs, Riverside County, California. She is interred beside her husband in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Westwood, California.
was born in 1869 in Ohio. She married Francis Marion Taylor. Her sister Mabel married Howard Young. In 1897 the family lived in Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois as this is where their second son Francis was born that year. However in 1910 they are enumerated in the US Federal Census living in Cherokee, Oklahoma where they had bought a house and where Frank was a salesman in a dry goods store.
https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/elizabeth-mary-rosemond_43234463
http://fabpedigree.com/s021/f041108.htm
https://prezi.com/uvr1hbizr5kj/elizabeth-mary-rosemond-taylor/
http://www.dameelizabethtaylor.com/art.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_%C3%89lys%C3%A9e
Victor Cazalet was born in London, at 4 Whitehall Gardens, on 12 December 1896, the second son of William Marshall Cazalet and his wife, Maud. They were a prominent aristocratic English family[1] whose home had once been the residence of former Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel.[2]:2 The family also had a villa at Cimiez, France, where Queen Victoria was sometimes their guest; she also became Victor’s godmother.[2]:2
Cazalet’s mother with sons Edward and Victor, painted by John Singer Sargent, 1900-1901, LACMA[3]
Their family roots were in Languedoc, and after they were driven abroad, part settled in England and others in Russia.[2]:1 Cazalet’s father had achieved affluence in business and was heir to his own father’s fortune as an industrialist in Russia.[2]:1[2]:174 Cazalet’s mother was the daughter of a Scottish baronet, Sir John Heron-Maxwell of Springkell, who when he died had left his family penniless.[2]:2
Cazalet had three siblings, Edward, Thelma (later Thelma Cazalet-Keir) and Peter.[2] He was educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford.[4]
In a spirit echoing her husband’s contributions in the formative period of the film industry, Mrs. Ince provided a home for many of the artists that were then being drawn to Hollywood. Residents included some of the most famous names of the 1930s and 40s. Most notably Bette Davis, Errol Flynn (room 211), Edward G. Robinson (room 216), Carol Lombard (room 305), Edgar Rice Burroughs (room 408), Humphrey Bogart (room 603), Clark Gable (room 604), Ginger Rogers (room 705), Ed Sullivan (room 501), Gracie Allen and George Burns (room 609) along with Lillian Gish, Katharine Hepburn, George Gershwin, and Cary Grant.
http://www.countyhistorian.com/knol/4hmquk6fx4gu-540-ancestry-of-elizabeth-taylor-actr.html
Francis Lenn Taylor
Francis Lenn Taylor was born 28 Dec 1897 in Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois, the son of Francis Marion Taylor by his wife Elizabeth Mary Rosemond. The family is living in the town of Cherokee in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, where his father, also named Francis “Frank” is listed in the 1910 U.S. Federal Census, as a salesman in a dry goods store. C. David Heymann in his “Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor” states that his father “operated the local general store” (p13). He there quotes Nona Smith, a classmate of Francis’ from Cherokee, as saying that all the girls thought Francis was “very handsome”. But C. David seems to confuse where Elizabeth’s parents Francis and Sarah first met, thinking it was in this town.
By 1915 the Taylors had moved to Arkansas City, Cowley County, Kansas, where they are all listed living together in Kansas’ Special State Census that year. His father became a traveling salesman by 1920 which was then most commonly known as a “Commercial Traveler”, which is how he is listed in the federal census that year. It’s very likely that Francis had first met his future wife Sarah Viola Warmbrodt in Arkansas City, since she was also living in that same city with her parents from 1900 to at least 1920. Since she was about fifteen months older then he, they must have gone to the same high school together. Her parents are said to have at first opposed the friendship, as she was a year ahead of him in school.
Francis next appears living in 1917/18 in St Louis, Missouri on his World War I Draft Registration Card, where he lists himself as “secretary to Howard Young”, who had married Mabel Rosemond (1880-1955), his mother’s younger sister. Francis’ uncle Howard Young (1878-1972), living in St Louis, had taken a small photography studio, and developed an art buying and selling business. He took Francis with him to be his secretary, but by 1920, Howard, Mabel and Francis had all relocated to New York City. Where that year, they are all living at 620 Fifth Avenue.
In 1922 Francis was living at 34 West 58th Street, while Howard and Mabel lived in the Carlton House. In Jul 1925 he is living at 634 Fifth Avenue. In Jul 1926 he is living at 55 55th Street. Meanwhile, Sarah, who had moved with her own parents to California, became a stage actress, using the name “Sara Sothern”. In one newspaper article from this time period it describes her as having been a resident of Lawndale, California. She played parts in various cities including extended work in New York City. Perhaps Francis and Sarah bumped into each other there again. However they managed to meet and court, they ended up getting married 23 Oct 1926 in New York City.
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Dame Elizabeth’s Art Collection
Dame Elizabeth’s “love affair with jewelry” has often overshadowed her equally magnificent collection of Impressionist art. Incredibly rare paintings by Picasso, Utrillo, Degas, Rouault, Monet, Pissaro, Renoir, Mary Cassatt, Modigliani, Vlaminck, van Gogh, Frans Hals, Matisse, Cézanne, Cassatt, Rembrandt, Erté and Frans Hals have all hung on the walls of Dame Elizabeth’s grand homes, on land or at sea.
Elizabeth grew up with an understanding and appreciation for fine art. Her father, Francis Taylor, was an art dealer with a gallery located at 35 Old Bond Street in London. He learned the business under the tutelage of his uncle, Howard Young. After relocating with his family to sunny California during the war, Francis opened an art gallery at the Château Elysée, but quickly relocated it to the more impressive Beverly Hills Hotel. It was at that location that such celebrities as Howard Duff, Vincent Price, James Mason, Alan Ladd, Hedda Hopper, and Greta Garbo could be found selecting art for their own collections. Francis Taylor was also a trendsetter; responsible for the popularity of Augustus John in the United States. Francis, who had a keen eye, asked John if he could buy some of the paintings John had discarded. John felt they weren’t good enough to sell, and gave them to Francis free of charge. They were sold back at the art gallery in the States, where Augustus John paintings would be sold exclusively for many years. Francis would soon find an art connoisseur in his daughter, Elizabeth, who would amass one of the great private collections of Impressionist art in America.
One of her first big pieces was one by Frans Hals, given to by Francis on the occasion of her marriage to Nicky Hilton. Elizabeth owns several other Hals, including “Portrait of a Man”.
Elizabeth’s collection of art, like her collection of jewelry, grew during her brief but passionate marriage to the great Mike Todd. During this time, Todd, who was also an art connoisseur, purchased painting by Degas, Utrillo, and Vuillar from the collection of Aly Khan for a reported cost of $71,428. “They’ll think I’m crazy when they hear about this in Hollywood,” Todd joked. “Paying that much for pictures that don’t even move.” Once, while Elizabeth was hospitalized, Todd decorated the walls of her sterile hospital room with paintings by Renoir, Pissarro, and Monet (Todd even unintentionally punctured the Van Gogh with a pencil, but Elizabeth’s uncle, Howard Young, was able to mend it). “He knew how much I loved paintings. He loved paintings, too, but instead of buying himself the paintings, he’d buy them for me,” Elizabeth remembered. The Todds were generous with their collection; even loaning pieces to the Los Angeles County Art Museum.
Elizabeth continued to collect valuable art during her marriage to Richard Burton, and they together acquired many fabulous paintings. Bidding on behalf of his daughter, Francis Taylor purchased Vincent van Gogh’s “Lunatic Asylum, St. Remy” at Sotheby’s (and as a belated birthday present, Francis Taylor purchased for Elizabeth a Utrillo at the same auction). The painting, which was being sold from the collection of Alfred Woolf, was auctioned for £92,000. She would later try (unsuccessfully) to part with the painting for $20 million.
Elizabeth once described her home as “such a cozy, sweet place with bits and pieces around—bits and pieces of Renoir—and, you know, things that make it homey.” All joking aside, like the joy her famous collection of jewelry has brought her, Elizabeth’s paintings serve as memories of incredible times from a bygone era, and the loved ones she shared them with.
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on Rosamond Press and commented:
The Title of my book-movie is…..THE PENNY BALLET.
JJ