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Theodore Roosevelt, 1903
John Singer Sargent.
Oil on canvas, 58 x 40 inches.
The White House, Washington, D.C. |
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author and art historian Catesby Leigh, writing recently in the
Wall Street Journal (December 18, 2007: "Why Presidential Portraiture
Lost Its Stature") presented a two-pronged critique of contemporary
Presi-dential portraiture, claiming that "the once-august genre
of presidential portraiture has lost its shine." Leigh's two-fold
thesis was: first: early examples, such as Gilbert Stuart's George
Washington (The famous Lansdowne version) were based on poses from
classical sculpture and included elements of power and grandeur,
such as columns, velvet drapes, swords and even Roman fasces, (thus
imparting the power of the office). Why, the 1982 White House portrait
of Gerald R. Ford (by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler) shows merely
a man in a three-piece suit! It could be "a bank president
or Major League Baseball commissioner" complains Leigh. Secondly,
contemporary Presidential portraits, including Kinstler's Ford,
Greta Kempton's Truman (1947), Norman Rockwell's Nixon (1968) and
Nelson Shanks' Clinton (2005), look, cries author Leigh, like "touched-up
photographs." "The poetry is just about gone," opines
Leigh. Well, let's have a look.
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Woodrow Wilson, 1917
John Singer Sargent.
Oil on canvas, 60 x 43 inches.
The White House,
Washington, D.C.
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Leigh correctly senses a turning point in
the work of the great John Singer Sargent (1856-1925),
who went twice to the White House: in 1903, to paint Theodore
Roosevelt, and again in 1917 to record Woodrow Wilson.
Both paintings are notable in the White House collection
in that both are totally devoid of any background elements.
In the Roosevelt (shown at the beginning of this article),
we have the newell post of the Grand Staircase, to allow
the President to place his right hand there in a commanding
gesture. In the Wilson, only the merest suggestion of
the presidential desk emerges from an impenetrable dark
background. Both paintings otherwise eschew the "trappings
of office" and concentrate on the personality, character,
and appearance of the man temporarily occupying the most
powerful office on earth.
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