By Tien-Shun Lee
For most of his life, William Sharp, an illustrator who settled in Forest Hills after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1934, was never without a pen and sketchbook.
From his days in Austria and Poland, where he studied fine art, to his days in Germany, where he worked as a courtroom illustrator, to his days in New York City, where he worked for courtrooms, newspapers and magazines, Sharp was continually sketching, documenting the vivid expressions of criminals, politicians and ordinary people with ink and charcoal.
“He would go to Alley Pond Park. He just liked to hang out there and draw people,” said Harold Shachner, 82, a retired jazz musician who became friends with Sharp and his wife after they moved into his Forest Hills apartment building at 66-20 108th St. in 1936.
Sharp died in 1961, leaving behind a lifetime of sketches and paintings. With the help of Shachner and his wife, Natalie, a selection of about 300 of his works was recently put on display at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
The Sharp exhibit will be on display until March 2. An opening reception for the exhibit will be held on Sunday, Jan. 12, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Some of Sharp’s most famous works include illustrations of the ’40s and ’50s trials of Alger Hiss, Bruno Hauptmann, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and “Tokyo Rose.”
Hiss was a New Deal diplomat and founding member of the United Nations who was accused in 1949 by the House Un-American Activities Committee of being a Communist Party member and secretly passing on official documents to the Soviet Union.
Similarly, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted in 1953 of giving atomic secrets to Russia during World War II, and were sentenced to die for treason. One of Sharp’s drawings depicts the electric chair which was used to execute the Rosenbergs on June 19, 1953.
The Hauptmann trial in 1934, Sharp’s first major job in New York, involved the kidnapping and killing of the 20-month-old first-born son of Charles Lindbergh and his wife. Lindbergh was the first man to ever fly across the Atlantic Ocean in an aircraft alone.
The 1952 trial of “Tokyo Rose” involved a Japanese-American disc jockey who was stranded in Japan after the Pearl Harbor attacks and made propaganda radio broadcasts to U.S. forces on behalf of the Japanese.
“It was hard to choose with him because the range is so large and it’s all so interesting,” said Valerie Smith, the curator of the Sharp exhibition. “The hardest part was the research. We don’t have the articles to go with his World War II, Cold War and New York scenes.”
In addition to courtroom scenes, Sharp sketched satirical drawings of American society. He was deeply concerned with racial injustice and created several series of drawings that addressed the welfare and treatment of African-Americans in the legal system. He also created a series of works celebrating jazz culture in the 1950s, much of which centered around musicians who lived in Queens.
Sharp’s works were published in Life, PM, Esquire, the New York Post, Colliers, The New York Times Magazine and numerous other magazines and newspapers.
“His work was so good; everybody loved it,” Shachner said. “In the magazines and newspapers you don’t see this kind of quality today. You don’t get this kind of quality in the courtroom with a photograph.”
In addition to the opening reception for Sharp on Jan. 12, Sharp’s works at the museum will also be highlighted on Saturday, Jan. 18 at 2 p.m. when Tony Hiss, the son of Alger Hiss, is scheduled to give a lecture. Tony Hiss is the author of “The View from Alger’s Window,” a memoir of his father’s trial and imprisonment.
Two community days for Forest Hills and Rego Park residents will be held at the museum from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 30, and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 2. Students from PS 144, the QMA’s partner school, will serve as guides to the museum on Feb. 2.
Reach reporter Tien-Shun Lee by email at Timesledger@aol.com, or call 229-0300, ext. 155.
