Erin Marie Crowe has done more than 50 unauthorized portraits of Alan Greenspan.
As a tribute to the end of his tenure as chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System on Jan. 31, more than 30 of the paintings were exhibited in January and early February in New York at her show, "Goodbye, Greenspan."
The paintings were expected to be priced from $9,500 to $15,000, said Rebecca Cooper, owner of The Gallery at Sag Harbor, Sag Harbor, N.Y., which presented the exhibit in Manhattan.
Last summer, Ms. Crowe — a 2003 graduate of the University of Virginia in studio art and now a candidate for a master's degree in fine art at Goldsmiths College, University of London — exhibited 18 paintings of Mr. Greenspan at the Sag Harbor gallery, near the summer homes of many Wall Streeters, a market she said she targeted. This earlier group of smaller paintings sold out "within a matter of hours," at prices ranging from $2,000 to $4,000, Ms. Crowe said.
"I was fascinated by the reaction I got" to the first group of paintings, she said. "I knew he was getting ready to retire, and I thought this would be a great way to make some money while I'm in graduate school."
Ms. Crowe hasn't met Mr. Greenspan; she said she wrote to him once, describing her work, but he hasn't replied.
She isn't sure where her career in art will next take her except to note "I'm done" painting Alan Greenspan. "And I'm not going to paint (Ben) Bernanke," his successor.
