Америкалық суретші және портрет шебері

American illustrator and painter

From the 1920s until the early 1950s, Christy was active as a portrait painter whose sitters included presidents, senators, industrialists, movies stars, and socialites. He painted Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, and Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. Other famous people he painted include William Randolph Hearst, Edward VIII, Eddie Rickenbacker, Benito Mussolini, Prince Umberto, and Amelia Earhart. By 1938, Time magazine described Christy as "the most commercially successful U. S. artist."

Christy was born in Morgan County, Ohio and attended early school in Duncan Falls, Ohio. In 1924, Christy painted the official portrait of First Lady Grace Coolidge featuring her white collie Rob Roy, that was hung in the Red Room of the White House and has been displayed in the China Room since the Kennedy administration. During the Great Depression, Christy found new success as a muralist and painter of historical events. In 1934 he painted a series of female nudes to decorate the New York City restaurant Café des Artistes. They include six panels of wood nymphs and paintings such as The Parrot Girl, The Swing Girl, Ponce De Leon, Fall, Spring, and the Fountain of Youth. In 1940, he painted the Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, which was installed in the House of Representatives wing in the United States Capitol. Christy's Portrait of Dorothy Barton Thomas is in the Zanesville Museum of Art in Zanesville, Ohio, along with other Christy posters, prints and paintings in their collection. Another of Christy's paintings was displayed at the Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center. The National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, RI, has a large collection of works by Christy. A Christy hangs above a desk and typewriter in Jack London's cottage, located in Jack London State Historic Park, Glen Ellen, California.

Christy was married twice, both times to women who had modeled for him as one of his "Christy Girls". The first was Maebelle Gertrude Thompson, whom he married on October 15, 1898, shortly after his return from the Spanish–American War. They had a daughter named Natalie Chandler Christy. They finally divorced in May 1919, after over ten years of periodic separation, bitter divorce, and custody battles. His second marriage was to Nancy Mae (née Coone) Palmer, a widow who had modeled for him for over eight years prior to their marriage. in the words of then New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. Forty years his junior, she became Christy's companion until his death at age 80. They had a daughter named Holly (Holly Christina Longuski née Holly Ford) born in 1939 while he was painting Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States. Christy was the cousin of actor Chick Chandler.

Attorney and author James Philip Head wrote a novelistic biography of Christy, The Magic of Youth, published in 2016. It is the first book in a projected trilogy titled An Affair with Beauty The Mystique of Howard Chandler Christy. Romantic Illusions, the second installment in the trilogy, was released in March 2019. Helen Frances Copley (1935–2021) documented her research into the life of Christy in her 1999 book "The Christy Quest". Copley's viewing of Christy's painting of Christ "The Coming Peace and Prince of Peace" led her to ten years of research to better understand the man behind the unusual portrayal of Jesus. In 2017, Copley donated her substantial collection of items related to Christy's career as a book and magazine illustrator and the Christy Girl to Laffayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Baskind, Samantha, “Allegory vs. Authenticity: The Commission and Reception of Howard Chandler Christy's The Signing of the Constitution of the United States,” Winterthur Portfolio 46, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 63 92. Christy, Howard Chandler. The American Girl. New York: Moffat, Yard and Co, 1906. Christy, Howard Chandler, and E. Stetson Crawford. The Christy Girl. Indianapolis: The Bobbs Merrill Co, 1906.