Painted portrait of Lloyd Walton Patterson, on long-term loan to Hillwood

Hillwood Estate, Museum & GardensForest Hills, Northwest Washington

Portrait of Lloyd Patterson

Now showing19 April 2022 – 31 March 2027$20

A long-term loan portrait of Lloyd Walton Patterson, who travelled to Soviet Russia in 1932 for the film Black and White and stayed, opening up the history of Black Americans in the USSR.

Exhibition website Book tickets

More in Washington, DC

On now All of October 2026

In 1992 Andrew Leddy was going through a Moscow antiques shop when he found a portrait of a young Black man, painted heroically under a turbulent sky. The clerks knew one thing about the sitter: "Patterson. Patterson." Months later Leddy met the sitter's widow, the artist Vera Aralova, who told him she had never seen it.

The sitter is Lloyd Walton Patterson (1910-1942). In 1932 he sailed to Moscow with Langston Hughes, Louise Thompson and about twenty others to make Black and White, a film about American racism. It collapsed within weeks and most of the group went home. Patterson stayed, married Aralova, and their son James was the toddler at the centre of the 1936 Soviet hit Circus. Painter and date are still unknown.

If you come for the Faberge eggs, give this one painting a few minutes too. It's a long-term loan from Leddy, hung alongside works from Post's collection, included in Hillwood's suggested donation ($20 adults) and on view until 31 March 2027.

Look for

The portrait itself
Look for a young Black man shown confident and heroic against a turbulent sky, an image Leddy says he never expected to find in Russia or America.