The presidential portraits in the White House date back to Gilbert Stuart’s iconic painting of George Washington. First lady Dolley Madison famously saved the painting when she and President James Madison fled the president’s mansion as the British torched the place in 1814 during the War of 1812.
“Presidents and first ladies typically select their respective artists before leaving the White House,” the association said. But sometimes they aren’t happy with the initial results.
In 1902, Roosevelt detested his portrait by French artist Theobald Chartran so much that he hid it in a closet and then had it destroyed. He complained that it made him look more like a meek kitty than “the powerful president.” He chose artist John Singer Sargent to paint a new one that made him look more macho.
Johnson refused to accept his portrait by noted artist Peter Hurd, who showed him standing in front of the Capitol and holding a book. In the portrait, “Johnson looms like some hulking cow hand,” wrote Time magazine columnist Hugh Sidey. “The mouth that Hurd has painted is firm, even capable of meanness,” and the Vietnam War and Watts riots are reflected “in the furrows of the brow and eyes.”
Johnson switched to Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who had painted the official portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In her portrait, also with the Capitol in the background, Johnson looks “unbelievably pleasant,” Sidey wrote. But between the two paintings, he wrote, those who knew Johnson “will recall with fondness ‘the other one’ — the real one.”
President Richard M. Nixon didn’t have time to sit for a portrait before he resigned in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal. He finally had one done by Alexander Clayton, showing the former president sitting at his Oval Office desk. The painting turned up on a White House wall in 1981, “placed without fanfare,” news services reported.
But Nixon wasn’t satisfied with the painting. In 1984, he donated a new portrait by James Anthony Wills, who had painted President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s portrait. “He liked it better,” said a federal official.
The official unveilings of presidential and first lady portraits began in May 1978, when Democratic President Jimmy Carter hosted former Republican president Gerald Ford and Betty Ford. The former president said he saw the final portraits by Everett Raymond Kinstler only moments before the ceremony began. “In my case, considering what Kinstler had to work with, he did well,” he said.