About this work
- **R. D. Shepherd** = Rezin Davis Shepherd , a Shakespearean actor whose stage name was R. D. McLean.
- His favorite role was that of Shylock, which he had played more than 400 times, from the *Merchant of Venice*.
- The Smithsonian catalogue lists the work as a **pastel**, categorized under "Portraits," with a companion entry "R. D. Shepherd" and "Odette Tyler Shepherd" as a pair. - A separate entry in the same catalogue lists "R. D. Shepherd as Shylock" under "Other Interpretations," meaning this portrait is the straight portrait, not the theatrical one. - Alice Pike Barney's *Odette Tyler Shepherd* is dated 1927 and executed in pastel on pulpboard. The R. D. Shepherd portrait is a companion work in the same medium. - At the close of the 1906 season, R. D. and Odette retired and returned to their farm before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1911 and resuming their professional activities devoted to Shakespeare.
This is enough to write a well-grounded description.
**R. D. Shepherd** is a pastel portrait of Rezin Davis Shepherd — the American Shakespearean actor who performed under the stage name R. D. McLean — rendered by Barney with the intimate directness she brought to her best portraiture. The medium is pastel on pulpboard, a support she favored for its capacity to hold soft, powdery transitions of tone and color. The work presents the sitter in close focus: a mature, commanding face caught in three-quarter or frontal view, the handling loose enough to register the personality of the man rather than merely his likeness. Barney rarely allowed her subjects to recede into decorum; the pastel medium lets her build presence through layered strokes that read as both sensitive and assured, the palette drawing on warm ochres and cool shadows in the manner she absorbed from Whistler's tonal discipline.
The portrait is dated 1927 — a period when Barney was based between Washington and Los Angeles, where she had opened Theatre Mart and continued to move through theatrical circles. The Shepherds had relocated to Hollywood in 1919, where R. D. achieved a reputation as "one of the finest classical actors Los Angeles had ever possessed." The two artists' worlds overlapped naturally: Barney painted both husband and wife, producing companion portraits of R. D. Shepherd and Odette Tyler Shepherd as a pair. Shepherd was a figure well suited to Barney's eye —
