[Portrait] Gaye Ellington recently explained why she pastarted this portrait of her grandfather, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington: "Ever since my grandfather had died, many artists have done representations of him. They were what other people saw in my grandfather. When I looked at them, they didn't express what I thought of him, and it disturbed me. . . . A lot of the photographs of him were very serious. I'm not saying he was always happy. But he would turn around in a minute and smile."

Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, from the estate of Edward (Duke) Ellington.

Heritage: EKE; posthumous portrait of Duke Ellington (1899-1974), 1985, by his granddaughter, Gaye Ellington (b. 1955), acrylic on canvas

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