Liberace

Object Details

Exhibition Label

When caricaturist Al Hirschfeld depicted Liberace in 1954, the pianist-wearing white tie and tails, and posed at a candelabra-bedecked concert grand-was television's reigning matinee idol: his weekly show was carried by 217 stations (more than I Love Lucy), and his concert tours sold out across the nation. He played popular music, favorite parlor songs, and classics "without the dull parts." Flamboyant costumes were added to his ostentatious style of performance. For the country's 1976 Bicentennial, he wore red, white, and blue hot pants and twirled a baton; for his 1984 appearances at Radio City Music Hall, he arrived on stage in a chauffeured Rolls Royce and danced with the Rockettes while draped in a $300,000 rhinestone-studded Norwegian blue fox cape with a sixteen-foot train. Liberace never forgot that "without the show, there is no business."

Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Artist

Al Hirschfeld, 21 Jun 1903 - 21 Jan 2003

Sitter

Liberace, 16 May 1919 - 4 Feb 1987

Date

1954

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Medium

Gouache over graphite on illustration board

Dimensions

Sheet: 56.6 x 51.8cm (22 5/16 x 20 3/8")

Mat: 71.1 x 55.9cm (28 x 22")

Type

Drawing