LeRoy Neiman, 1921–2012

The only sport LeRoy Neiman hated was professional wrestling, and he had his reasons. In a gag that went too far, the wrestler Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon once tore up Neiman’s paintings at ringside. “Next thing I know, I’m yelling at him, and all of a sudden he throws me into the ring, then picks me up and starts spinning me over his head,” Neiman recalled. “Unbelievably crude. I don’t associate with crude people.”

Neiman’s rise to fame was a “classic American success story,” said Grantland.com. Brought up “dirt poor” in St. Paul, Minn., Neiman taught himself to draw by sketching cows and chickens for a local supermarket. While a freelance illustrator for a Chicago department store in 1953, he befriended Hugh Hefner, “whose nascent men’s magazine was just finding its footing.” Neiman originated a series for Playboy known as “Man at His Leisure,” which “granted him access to the high life”—allowing him to paint subjects as varied as nude beaches in Dalmatia, the running of the bulls in Pamplona, and the Monaco Grand Prix. “Playboy made the good life a reality for me,” Neiman later said.

But Neiman became truly famous as the “foremost artist of the sporting world,” said The Washington Post—a field in which there was little competition. He covered five Olympics, along with countless Super Bowls, World Series, and boxing championships. Neiman became “the court painter of sports royalty,” rendering colorful, impressionistic portraits of athletes like Muhammad Ali and Joe Namath. With his white suits, ever-present cigar, and “mustache that stretched almost ear to ear,” he was an instantly recognizable character on the sidelines. While he was artist-in-residence at the New York Jets in 1975, the crowd began chanting “Put LeRoy in!”

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Neiman “didn’t make art, exactly,” said The New Yorker. “He delivered art product.” But despite his “dandyish mien, he never succumbed to pretension,” and took the art world’s scorn philosophically. “Maybe the critics are right, but what am I supposed to do about it—stop painting, change my work completely?” he said. “I enjoy what I’m doing, and I feel good working.”