The man in the seventeenth portrait is painted in a disjointed, mosaic form.  He is wearing a mismatched shirt and jacket and he sits in a large room of which the walls are lined with full bookcases. Beside him on a glass table sits a vase of tulips.  The man is alone in the large room.

                This man is a forty-five year old History professor at Columbia University.  He lives in New York City, in a spacious loft apartment near the campus.  The professor received his undergraduate degree from Columbia and returned after receiving his Doctorate to begin a fifteen year career.  In addition to teaching full time, the man is a lover of books―especially History books―and his apartment is filled with accounts of everything from the history of the Aztecs to the American Civil War.  He has even written a few books of his own.

                The professor is cultured and quiet.  He is a thoughtful man that would be perfectly content to keep to himself and immerse himself in his books.  Often, he disappears for days at a time while he pours over a new book and emerges only when he becomes too hungry to concentrate.  The man is also very organized and neat.  His apartment is spotless and orderly, with everything in its place.  However, he is also very eccentric and slightly absentminded. 

                A year ago, the man received divorce papers from his wife of twenty years and the love of his wife.  They met at Columbia when they were still in school and were married a few years later.  The couple never had any children because they were both busy with careers, but they had a very loving marriage.  However, two years ago, the man became detached and buried himself in his work.  Slowly, he distanced himself from his neglected wife.  Finally, she left him and filed for divorce.

                Since his divorce, the man has again busied himself with his books and his teaching.  This has helped to distract him from the pain of his divorce, but he can still feel her absence at times.  The man’s wife always chose his outfits for him because of his lack of understanding of fashion.  However, with her gone, he often stands staring at his closet, wondering what she would pick for him to wear (he is usually wrong, like with the jacket and shirt he wears in the portrait).  He also keeps fresh tulips in a vase on his table because tulips were his wife’s favorite flower.  Recently, it has become a habit for the man to buy tulips on the way home from work, even though he no longer does it on purpose. 

                This portrait shows a man whose first love is his work.  Though his love of history caused him to lose his wife, but he returned to it with the same fervor as before.  He is sometimes sad and lonely, but he is happy with his lifelong pursuit of knowledge and his love of history.