Painter Henry Caseselli’s career has gone through several unusual phases, all of which are on view at this retrospective at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Casselli came from a blue-collar family in New Orleans but managed to find his way to art school. In the mid-1960s he joined the Army and was sent to Vietnam as a ‘combat artist’, which later led to involvement with the US space programme and selection as the official portraitist of Ronald Reagan. Casselli’s finely tuned images suggest comparisons with Andrew Wyeth and even John Singer Sargent. Whether he’s painting Marines at war, astronauts, mothers with babies or the segregated South of his childhood, Casselli approaches his subjects with a deeply felt tenderness and respect.
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