Who painted this iconic portrait of Stephen Mather? When, why, and just where is it?

Mather Homestead Foundation
Aug 12
1 min read

If you’ve picked up Robert Shankland’s definitive biography of Stephen Mather, you’ve seen the image. If you’ve visited the Homestead, you’ve seen it.

This well-known and copied image of America’s first Director of the National Parks Service, was painted by a Hungarian immigrant in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1939 as part of the WPA’s Federal Art Project.

Odon Hullenkremer (1888-1978) was born in Budapest, Hungary. According to the Nedra Matteucci Gallery in Santa Fe, Hullenkremer “began drawing when he was only seven. A few years later he entered a painting in a Hungarian exhibition, taking top honors… Most notably…he won a scholarship to the Academie Julian in Paris, where he received his diploma in 1929. In 1933, Hullenkremer moved to the American Southwest to study and paint Indian life…Hullenkremer moved into a home on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, where he remained for 44 years…His work is represented in the collections of the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C.; The National Park Service, New Mexico.; The State Capitol, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the New Mexico School for the Deaf, Santa Fe.”

Today the painting is in National Park Service Southwest Regional Office in Santa Fe and “hangs in the lobby in an eight-foot by nine-foot recess at the end of the room opposite the doors…”