Jackson commissioned Portsmouth native to make portraits

Portsmouth-reared Ralph Wolfe Cowan, portrait artist of the rich and titled, painted Michael Jackson four times around 1993. The pop star bought the first one, then commissioned and paid for three more.

That first painting Cowan made was in the background of shots in Jackson’s living room during his well-known 1993 televised interview with Oprah Winfrey, Cowan said Friday after learning of Jackson’s death.

The artist said he painted it at the suggestion of a Florida gallery dealer, who wanted him to paint “someone who is really famous.” Cowan opted to transform a “wild, abstract painting” of his into a portrait of Jackson.

Cowan appealed to the kid within Jackson by dressing him in a suit of armor and adding a sword, a parrot and an Asian angel to signify his Asian fan base. Bubbles, his pet monkey, was portrayed squatting loyally at his feet. An image of it was sent to Jackson’s staff.

“When I painted it, I had these dogs down in the bottom somewhere. German shepherds. Michael Jackson called up his curator, who called the guy at the gallery, who called my business manager Steve (Mohler), and Steve told me Michael didn’t want the dogs in there,” Cowan recalled.

Cowan balked at this long-relayed message and insisted he hear from Jackson himself.

“Dealing with Michael Jackson was more complicated than dealing with a king. More complicated than dealing with Sinatra.”

Cowan’s subjects have included Frank Sinatra as well as Princess Grace and Prince Rainier III of Monaco, King Hassan II of Morocco, and four American presidents.

Soon after, Cowan got a call. “Hello, this is Michael. I don’t like dogs,” he said in a soft, gentle voice. “I like monkeys.”

Jackson paid about $30,000 for the 8-foot-tall painting, sans dogs, which he hung in a living room beside his piano, said Cowan, who was then invited to the star’s Neverland estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., to make plans for several more portraits.

“It was just spectacular,” he said. Cowan entered through a front gate, then caught a ride to the front door on a small, Disneyland-like train.

The artist talked with him about the portraits and took photos of him to refer to as he painted in his Florida studio.

Cowan, who is 77 and lives in West Palm Beach, Fla., couldn’t remember those portraits very well. One was a sepia-colored drawing; another featured monkeys in a tree behind him.

As he posed, Jackson peppered Cowan with questions, leaving no space for him to ask about Jackson, he said. “Sort of like an interview about me. I was sort of shocked.”

He remembered talking about the gorgeous furniture in Jackson’s home, some of which was Louis XVI, he said. “He has this great tree where he writes his music. So I climbed up in this treehouse with him, and he gets his ideas up there. He told me five great, great songs he wrote up in that tree.”

Cowan couldn’t remember the song titles. “I’ve never been a fan of any singer since Johnny Mathis,” he said.

“I also thought he didn’t need any more surgery. I said that (to him), as an artist, but he went out and cut off too much of his nose.”

Cowan said he enjoyed his brief, professional relationship with the king of pop. “He was very, very kind and sweet.”

Cowan left Portsmouth at 16 to study at the Art Students League in New York. His career took off in the 1950s when his portrait of Mathis dressed in white was used on the cover of his album “Heavenly.”

In 1982, he was honored with an exhibition at the Portsmouth Museums, and in 1998, he presented his portrait of Portsmouth Mayor James W. Holley III to his hometown.

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485,

teresa.annas@pilotonline.com