Elie Cristo-Loveanu

Romanian-born Elie Cristo-Loveanu distinguished himself as a portrait artist. He taught art at the Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Romania, and in 1916 received an award, the Lecomte du Nouy, from the Royal Romanian Academy of Fine Arts. Cristo-Loveanu was later appointed Officer of the Crown of Romania. In 1922, he immigrated to the United States with his family. He was a professor of painting at New York University during the 1940s and 1950s, after settling in New York. He was an artist and educator who painted portraits of former Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover.

In 1942 Cristo-Loveanu became associate professor of the Romanian language at the Columbia University, where he published a manual on the language, which he also illustrated. Together with his wife Olga (1898-?), a soprano singer, he promoted the propagation of Romanian culture in the United States.

His works, submitted “hors concours” in 1932, were both portraits: one of the polo player Tommy Hitchcock (1900–1944), the other one, reproduced in the catalog, was a portrait of a Miss Fox as a horsewoman. Her identity could not be clarified.