McKendree Long

Who was McKendree Long?

McKendree Long was an American minister and painter.

Educated at Horner Military Academy in Oxford and at Davidson College, he went on to attend classes at the Art Students League in New York. Upon winning a scholarship for study in Europe, he travelled there, learning an academic style of portrait painting. He returned to the United States, working as a professional portraitist in New York and North Carolina. Long went on to serve in World War I, and abandoned his artistic career afterwards, being ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1922, becoming an evangelist in the southern U.S. In his seventies, Reverend Long began painting again, in a far more surrealistic fashion that widely differed from the style of his previous portraiture.

Grandson Ben Long is also an alumnus of the Art Students League in New York. Ben Long has gained substantial international notoriety, particularly for his drawings and fresco work.