LAST PORTRAIT OF PAUL BOWLES: by the artist James Krone

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A Recent Discovery: The Final Portrait of Paul Bowles
by the American Artist James Krone

By Phillip Ramey


James Krone in Madagascar, 2005 (photograph © by Alexis Burdette-Hunt)

For two days in April 2006, I had the pleasure to be the houseguest of my friends Joan and Philip Krone, in Chicago. Their elegant town-house, located in a historic district of the city, is adorned with numerous oil paintings by their son, James. When I expressed admiration for certain of them, Phil mentioned that James had made a charcoal-and-ink sketch of our mutual friend Paul Bowles in Tangier early in 1999, and that it was certainly the last portrait Bowles sat for. I asked to see the sketch and was struck by the fidelity with which James Krone had captured Paul's essence a few months before his death. Having spent much time with Paul during that period, I felt startled as the elderly writer seemed suddenly to spring to life. James had caught him in a somber, contemplative mood, and I consider the sketch a superb representation of Bowles, one that somehow opens a portal on the subject's inner self at the time of his approaching end.

James Krone was born in Chicago in 1975. A graduate of the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, he presently resides in Los Angeles. In France in 1995, James exhibited with the eminent printmaker Vera Berdich (1915-2003), and in 1998 he was the youngest painter and the only American to be included in London's Colony Room Club Fiftieth Anniversary Show, his work appearing alongside that of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Patrick Caulfield. James shares with the late Paul Bowles a love of travel and has lived in Tangier and Prague.

Although I make no pretense to being an art critic, I think the vision reflected in many of James Krone's paintings demonstrates an impressive breadth of feeling, evoked by blazing colors and oft-subtle textures. For me, his refined, grim study of my friend Paul Bowles is a small masterpiece of intuitive depiction rendered by impeccable technique.

The Last Portrait of Paul Bowles
by the artist James Krone

James Krone can be contacted by E-mail at:

PHILLIP RAMEY is a composer, pianist and writer. From 1977 to 1993, he was Annotator and Program Editor of the New York Philharmonic. In 2005, the Library of Congress in association with Pendragon Press published his biography of the American composer Irving Fine; and in early 2006 a CD entirely devoted to Ramey's piano music, performed by Stephen Gosling, was released internationally by Toccata Classics, London.

Late Years: Part One; Part Two; Previous (Part Three); Return to galleries listing.

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