Attorney General: Herbert Brownell, Jr.
Herbert Brownell, Jr. was born in Peru, Nebraska, on February 20, 1904. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska in 1924, graduated from Yale Law School in 1927, and was admitted to the New York bar that same year. Brownell moved to the firm of Lord, Day & Lord in 1929 and became a partner in 1932. He served as chairman of the Republican National Committee, as a member of the New York State Bar Association, and in many professional and learned societies.
Appointed Attorney General of the United States by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 21, 1953, Brownell remained in that office until November 8, 1957. In 1963, he served as president of the New York City Bar Association, and he was later an adviser to New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay. At President Richard Nixon’s request, Brownell served as a Special Envoy to Mexico from 1972 to 1974, and, from 1975 to 1981, as one of the U.S. members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. He died at his home in New York City on May 1, 1996.
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1876, John C. Johansen was brought to the United States as an infant. He studied under Frank Duveneck at the Art Institute of Chicago. One of the leading portraitists of his day, during World War I he was commissioned to portray Allied leaders Ferdinand Foch, Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover. Johansen's portrait of Attorney General Brownell was painted in 1958. He died in 1964.