You’ve probably heard about the fact that usually the best ideas comes in the least expected moments. “I try to just remember that this is all about my own personal journey in trying to be the best artist I can possibly be with the situation as it is, the deadlines.When you go back to your project, you have renewed enthusiasm, insight and opportunity. “Everybody loves to be an art critic,” she says. Sometimes it draws negative attention, as with her renderings of Tom Brady in 2015, but ultimately Rosenberg knows she always has to move on.
“I don’t have time to go home and finish things, work on anything, touch anything up, whatever it is it is, I have to accept that.” There’s no time to make that neck slimmer or that jaw finer. So I had to pack up my pastel box and my art supplies, rush into the hallway, and finish up the finishing touches and then get outside and shoot the artwork and email it in. “I had to finish up my sketch in the hallway because I got kicked out immediately right after the proceeding. Sketching Bannon was particularly stressful, Rosenberg says, because it was 4:30 when she got out of court. But the deadlines don’t change, because outlets need sketches for the five o’clock news and for breaking news.
An arraignment like Bannon’s is short, so she’ll have time for one sketch an hours-long hearing would be three sketches and a lengthy trial will generate significantly more. She knows what the proceedings will be and how long they’ll take, so she knows how many sketches she’ll have time for. “For the first probably 10 years, I had a knot in my stomach every time I went to court, which I don’t have anymore, because I was so stressed out,” she says. Her courtroom work is now in the collections of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and The Museum of the Constitution in Philadelphia, and has appeared not just on NBC, but CBS, ABC and CNN, among countless others. Rosenberg called her parents in delight, and she has been working in the courtroom as a full-time freelance sketch artist ever since.
Noticing that NBC hadn’t conscripted one for the Mintiks case, she offered them her sketches, and they appeared on the news that evening. In those days, Rosenberg says, there were sketch artists for every newspaper, magazine, and local and national television news outlet with as many as 15-20 artists present at a single trial.
The first sketch Rosenberg sold was 1980’s “Murder at the Met,” in which Metropolitan Opera violinist Helen Hagnes Mintiks was killed at Lincoln Center. While cameras have begun popping up once again, for a long time courtroom sketches were the only visual recollection of historical or high-profile cases. It was a disruptive media circus of flashbulbs and cameras all vying for a piece of the action at this “trial of the century,” and the American Bar Association ultimately banned cameras entirely. Bernie Madoff.Ĭourtroom art as we know it today emerged from the “Lindbergh Baby” court cases of the 1930s, in which a man named Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried and convicted for kidnapping and murder of legendary airman Charles Lindbergh’s child. Harvey Weinstein’s rape trials earlier this year. The 2005 fraud conviction of WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers. Martha Stewart’s 2004 trials for insider trading. The 1993 Woody Allen-Mia Farrow custody hearings. She was at the trial of Mark David Chapman after he murdered John Lennon. “If somebody displays emotion, then that’s what I have to try to capture.” And after 40 years, Rosenberg has seen a wealth of moments both emotive and historical. I’m not trying to have an opinion in my work,” she says. “My job as a courtroom artist is to try to remain neutral all the time. Clad in a white oxford shirt, white mask and handcuffs, his shaggy hair made way for pleading eyes, a pathetic sight rendered almost expressionistically by the skilled hand of its artist.īut Rosenberg will tell you that her job is only to draw what she sees. Soon her courtroom sketch of the former White House Chief Strategist, who that day was indicted for fraud, ran rampant across the internet. But luckily she slipped into Manhattan’s federal court with plenty of time, her portfolio, paper, pastels, paper towels and binoculars in tow. Time was ticking, traffic was raging and her stress was mounting. On August 20th, she was two hours outside of New York when she got an email about the Steve Bannon arraignment hearing for conspiracy. Jane Rosenberg didn’t know if she’d make it.