The King of the Bootleggers

Caricaturing George Remus

My caricature of George Remus, after a couple of hours of brushwork.

After a hiatus for a family holiday, I have finally returned to work on my series of paintings inspired by Prohibition-era America. My latest subject is the Cincinnati lawyer, bootlegger, and wife-murderer George Remus.

In addition to turning up as a character in Boardwalk Empire, the unreasonably wealthy Remus is also said to have been the inspiration for The Great Gatsby, at least in part. He’s also the subject of a book entitled The Ghosts of Eden Park, by my very talented friend Abbott Kahler.

Starting out as a pharmacist, Remus became a lawyer, before he made a fortune brazenly building a bootlegging empire. This was in spite of being a lifelong teetotaller. The law caught up with him in 1925 when he was convicted for trading illicit booze, and he served a two-year prison sentence. He was also tried and confined to an insane asylum—albeit briefly—after publicly murdering his wife Imogene, who had been engaged in an open affair with an undercover Prohibition agent called Franklin Dodge.

Painting Remus was a snap decision. I stumbled across a photo of him online, and was immediately drawn to his bruiser looks, which cry out to be caricatured. So, within five minutes, I was priming the canvas with a wash of burnt umber, and mapping out his likeness with a long brush. Zero preparation. Just a totally intuitive reaction. There’s a burning aura of arrogance about him, which I hope I’m capturing.

For those interested in process, I created an off-white by adding a little Naples yellow to titanium white, and this helps with the sepia look I’m always trying to recreate for this series. The reference photo shows a lot more of Remus’s automobile than I have included, but he strikes me as a such a larger-than-life figure that I have him filling as much as the frame as I could manage. I’ll also keep the background simple and blurred to focus attention on him.

In other news, I also got around to completing the Barflies piece that has been clogging up my easel for too long. I’m pleased with how this turned out, and I hope the collection of staring eyes help draw the viewer in. Here it is:

I’ll post an update on my Remus painting as it progresses. I’m conscious that I’ve yet to portray any women from this era, so that’s something I’ll have to think about and remedy, at some point. I’d also like to paint exasperated lawmen brandishing machine guns, and enforcement agents pouring barrels of hooch down the gutters.

So much to do…