Artist Richard Blow wasn’t publicity shy. His name appeared regularly in the Society pages of the New York Times, New York Daily News, and Chicago Tribune. He hosted art buyers in his Manhattan gallery, and schmoozed with the rich and famous.

But he left behind surprisingly few public photographs of himself.

I spent 14 months intensely researching his life. As a investigative journalist, I honed my research skills on printed media – books, magazines, journals, newspaper morgues, court records, Dewey Decimal library cards, basement microfilm/microfiche readers, the Library of Congress, and federal archives. I’m also damn good at deep diving the digital record via specialized search engines on top of general Google sweeps. (My digging also included reaching out to living relatives in Richard’s extended family – no response).

All that time and effort ended up netting me just 14 photos.

Shown above is the first of my thin, 14-photo scrapbook, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young (and Old) Man.”

circa 1910

Photograph of Richard as a young boy with his mother Adele. It’s a formal, staged photograph, resembling an oil portrait. He’s dressed in white collar and tie as befitting the son of a wealthy American industrialist; there’s a feeling of quiet, Victorian domesticity to the composition. They’re photographed playing a board game at the family’s 2,000 acre Deer Park estate in LaSalle, Illinois, 90 miles southwest of Chicago. The Estate included a 26-room mansion, a four-car garage, a caretaker's house and a private fire station. 50 men maintained the estate grounds, and Richard was driven around by a chauffeur named “Dickie.” It’s a calm, safe, ordered life, a present filled with luxury, a future filled with promise.

Michael Schmicker