5807

Study portrait

Amory Houghton 1932

Half-length, slightly to the left, looking full face to the viewer, wearing a jacket and waistcoat, white shirt and dark necktie

Oil on board, 95.3 x 75 cm (37 ½ x 29 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / N.Y. 1932 II

Juley negative PPJ - 0058556

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 72: Amory Houghton  Feb. 18th 1932

Private Collection

De László painted a formal portrait of the sitter’s father, The Honourable Alanson Bigelow Houghton [5800], in 1928 in London during his tenure as American Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. He also painted the sitter’s mother in 1931 [5804], his sister Eleanor [111981] and aunt Mrs Arthur Amory Houghton, Sr. [5809] in 1932.

Amory Houghton was born 27 July 1899 in Corning, New York, the son of Alanson Bigelow Houghton (1863-1941) and his wife Adelaide (1867-1945). He graduated from Harvard University in 1921 and the same year married Laura DeKay Richardson (1900-2003) of Providence, Rhode Island. There were two children of the marriage: Elizabeth and Amory (born 1926). The sitter’s entire business career was spent with the Corning Glass Works, founded by his great-grandfather in 1851. After serving in various positions with the firm, he was elected president in 1930, board chairman in 1941, chairman of the executive committee in 1961, and chairman emeritus in 1971.

During the Second World War Houghton was active in the War Production Board’s bureau of industry branches, and served in London as chief mission officer for the Lend-Lease Administration. From 1957 to 1961 he served as Ambassador to France during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was the founder of the Corning Glass Museum and national president of the Boy Scouts of America from 1946 to 1951, an overseer of Harvard University, trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and a trustee of Eisenhower College in Seneca Falls, New York.

He died in Charleston, South Carolina, on 21 February 1981, at the age of 81.

MD 2020