Catesby Leigh: Why presidential portraiture lost its stature.
[Mr. Leigh is at work on a book about public monuments.]
Days after President Ford's death on Dec. 26, his portrait appeared on the Washington Post's front page. The picture hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, the only venue besides the White House with likenesses of all the nation's past presidents. The Post photo of this rather bland and ingratiating production--the work of Everett Raymond Kinstler--served as a poignant reminder that the once-august genre of presidential portraiture has lost its shine.
Think of presidential portraits and the first that comes to mind is most likely Gilbert Stuart's iconic George Washington, possibly followed by John Singer Sargent's very differently conceived Theodore Roosevelt. Though technically at least as competent as the general run of portraits of postwar presidents in the gallery and the White House, this work by Mr. Kinstler--painted in 1987, a decade after the artist's prominently displayed White House portrait of the same president--is a far cry from Stuart's or Sargent's achievements.
In spite of Mr. Kinstler's loose brushwork, his Ford reads too much like a touched-up photograph. It operates at the factual, prosaic level. Absent are poetic evocations of character, such as the virtues required to shoulder the burdens of the presidential office, let alone any symbolic indications of the ties that link Ford to the nation's ideals and destiny. Mr. Kinstler's Ford is just a likeable, smiling, aging hunk of a guy standing next to a table. Attired in a dark, pinstriped, three-piece suit, with one hand perched on the table, he boasts a healthy, ruddy complexion. He might as well be a bank president or Major League Baseball commissioner.
How did we get to this point? The answer comes by way of Sargent's Roosevelt portrait, which hangs in the White House's East Room. But we must begin at the beginning, with Stuart's Washington, on view in the very same room. While inspecting the T.R. portrait in person can be a problem, as public access to the White House has become more difficult since 9/11, the Washington is actually a replica, from Stuart's own hand, of his so-called Landsdowne portrait. The original hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
Washington sat for Stuart in 1796, the last year of his presidency. The painter crafted a truly definitive, characteristic image--the idea of Washington. This idea was not confined to the realm of perception, for Stuart employed the close observation of natural appearances as a means to an end, not as a factual end in itself. His Washington is no hunk, but his defining features are nobly distilled and clarified....
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Days after President Ford's death on Dec. 26, his portrait appeared on the Washington Post's front page. The picture hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, the only venue besides the White House with likenesses of all the nation's past presidents. The Post photo of this rather bland and ingratiating production--the work of Everett Raymond Kinstler--served as a poignant reminder that the once-august genre of presidential portraiture has lost its shine.
Think of presidential portraits and the first that comes to mind is most likely Gilbert Stuart's iconic George Washington, possibly followed by John Singer Sargent's very differently conceived Theodore Roosevelt. Though technically at least as competent as the general run of portraits of postwar presidents in the gallery and the White House, this work by Mr. Kinstler--painted in 1987, a decade after the artist's prominently displayed White House portrait of the same president--is a far cry from Stuart's or Sargent's achievements.
In spite of Mr. Kinstler's loose brushwork, his Ford reads too much like a touched-up photograph. It operates at the factual, prosaic level. Absent are poetic evocations of character, such as the virtues required to shoulder the burdens of the presidential office, let alone any symbolic indications of the ties that link Ford to the nation's ideals and destiny. Mr. Kinstler's Ford is just a likeable, smiling, aging hunk of a guy standing next to a table. Attired in a dark, pinstriped, three-piece suit, with one hand perched on the table, he boasts a healthy, ruddy complexion. He might as well be a bank president or Major League Baseball commissioner.
How did we get to this point? The answer comes by way of Sargent's Roosevelt portrait, which hangs in the White House's East Room. But we must begin at the beginning, with Stuart's Washington, on view in the very same room. While inspecting the T.R. portrait in person can be a problem, as public access to the White House has become more difficult since 9/11, the Washington is actually a replica, from Stuart's own hand, of his so-called Landsdowne portrait. The original hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
Washington sat for Stuart in 1796, the last year of his presidency. The painter crafted a truly definitive, characteristic image--the idea of Washington. This idea was not confined to the realm of perception, for Stuart employed the close observation of natural appearances as a means to an end, not as a factual end in itself. His Washington is no hunk, but his defining features are nobly distilled and clarified....