John Updike- Novelist Whose Second Love Was Painting- Dies at 76
Alex Katz Portrait of John Updike Oil on canvas, 1982 Time cover, October 18, 1982 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Gift of Time magazine John Updike has died at the age of 76. Updike's richly imagined novels chronicle the loves and losses of a post-Depression generation growing up during and away from the horrors of World War II into the uncertainty and the promise of the late 20th Century. Updike's second love was painting. Hillel Italie writes for AP that after graduating from Harvard, John Updike accepted "a one-year fellowship to study painting at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts at Oxford University. During his stay in England, a literary idol, E.B. White, offered him a position at The New Yorker, where he served briefly as foreign books reviewer. Many of Updike's reviews and short stories were published in The New Yorker, often edited by White's stepson, Roger Angell." Updike did not pursue the visual arts as a profession but...
