Portrait of Ambassador Dr. Hu Shih. Washington, 1939, printed 2017

Dr. Hu was educated under the Boxer [War] Indemnity Scholarship program and was a graduate of Cornell University. At the time of this sitting he was China’s ambassador to the United States. A respected member of the Chinese intelligentsia, he advocated for the written vernacular Chinese that is still in use today.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru. New York, 1949, printed 2017

Sternberger presents a careful composition in this portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru. The crisp white Khaddar cap and dark shadows offset each other. This photograph was used as Nehru’s official government portrait in India and could be found in every school, government office, and embassy worldwide. It continues to provide the cover for Nehru’s seminal Glimpses of World History, a collection of letters about the history of humankind written from prison.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Author Pearl S. Buck. New York, 1948, printed 2017

Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938 for “notable works which pave the way to a human sympathy passing over widely separated racial boundaries and for the studies of human ideals which are a great and living art.”

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Novelist Stefan Zweig. London, 1938, printed 2017

Like Einstein and Freud, Sternberger had known Zweig from before the war. The Austrian novelist and playwright was among the most popular writers in the world in the 1920s and 1930s. His work was recently the basis for the Wes Anderson film, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Sigmund Freud. London, 1938, printed 2017

Sternberger and Freud had known each other for years before they fled Europe with the rise of Nazism. Though Freud was terminally ill and at first hesitant about receiving visitors in 1938, the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis said it “makes me feel good to see old-familiar faces again” when Sternberger arrived. This is said to have been Freud’s last portrait session before his death in 1939.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of George Bernard Shaw. London, 1938, printed 2017

Shaw is pictured in three-quarter view with artful shadow play down the right side of his face. Sternberger was a ‘master of light and shadow’ according to contemporary museum directors.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of George Bernard Shaw examining stamps. London, 1938, printed 2017

In this portrait Shaw examines the stamps which Sternberger had designed for the Belgian Royal Family, featuring the Royal children. Shaw was a philatelist, and the offer of the stamps was part of Sternberger’s method to gain access to Shaw.

$900 unframed; framed: $1,300

Portrait of Albert Einstein. Princeton, New Jersey, 1950, printed 2017

In this portrait Sternberger shows Einstein dressed informally. Einstein was keenly aware of his public image, and often attempted to show a cheerful visage. The common backgrounds of the two men helped the photographer to put Einstein in a relaxed state and to capture him in a more vulnerable pose.

$1,250

The Psychological Portrait: Marcel Sternberger’s Revelations in Photography. Foreword by Phillip Prodger.. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2016

First edition, one of 100 copies of the Deluxe Estate Edition, signed and numbered by the author and accompanied by your choice of one of four 8 x 10 inch archival pigment photographs (Einstein, Freud, Shaw, or Kahlo).

$165