Self-Portrait

Rand was a successful artist whose work, in the depths of the Great Depression, was instrumental in the financial support of her husband and three sons. In 1930 alone she earned over $74,000 from portrait commissions, and one of her three paintings of Franklin D. Roosevelt is his official White House portrait. A highly skilled portraitist, Rand would naturally have considered exactly how she wanted history to view her. In her self-portrait of 1927 she is unmistakably the professional artist at work in her studio, armed with the tools of her profession. She makes direct eye contact with the viewer in a businesslike, even mannish manner, wearing an artist’s smock, eye glasses, and a fedora.