When it came time to commission a portrait of filmmaker Steven Spielberg for the National Portrait Gallery, Kate Capshaw was an obvious choice. Capshaw set out to capture Spielberg the person rather than Spielberg the phenomenon. Instead of leaning into the iconic image of Spielberg as a swashbuckling New Hollywood icon or a box-office-slaying hero, she opted for her signature black background and used as the source material an image of a softly smiling Steven at their breakfast nook: Steven the partner with whom she’s raised multiple kids, made a life.
“I was given the task of painting a portrait of this man who I couldn’t love more, but it was going into an institution that would own it forever,” she says. “I’ve been given this story to write. I’d better damn well write it great.”