August 17, 2016

This painting of Tony Drexel, started in the last year of his life, is finally allowed to hang on campus in 1894. The painting had been commissioned by Drexel’s board of managers in 1892, though Tony refused to sit for it for another year until his lifelong friend, business partner and fellow Drexel trustee George W. Childs persuaded him and his conditions were met: he would never see it hanging in his lifetime and the $5,000 fee to French painter M. Benjamin Constant would not be paid for by the institute’s funds. After the notoriously private Tony finished sitting, he reportedly got up and gestured for Childs to take his place for his own painting, telling him, “Now you must do as I have done; for as we have been together in life, you shall go down to posterity with me through Monsieur Constant’s genius.” Childs acquiesced and their two paintings are currently hung side-by-side in the Paul Peck Alumni Center.