hail to the chiefs and their portraits moroccan takes a closer look at a white house tradition ladies and gentlemen the president of the united states all my life i'd heard when the president comes in they play ruffles and flourishes inhaled to the cheek and there it was president mrs bush senior were there we sat right behind the obamas he was very gracious to us when someone would say something about the painting he would turn and nod to me like that perhaps you've heard of the ex-president's club well on may 31st 2012 john howard sandon became
a member of another group that's almost as exclusive the artists who've painted those presidents that moment when the paintings were unveiled i mean what were you feeling well you were scared because you know everybody in the audience is sitting there bracing you know how how awful is this going to be you know once everyone started applauding you feel a gigantic feeling of relief a sought-after portrait artist the new yorker once called sandon the man who makes moguls look good but there was a gaping hole in his otherwise impressive portfolio and i'd been doing portraiture at
that point for 40 years and i thought well i would love to have done a president because see in in my profession that's the highest honor there's nothing above that but you had thought it's not going to happen yeah i had assumed that and then uh he called if this were the one that had ended up hanging in the white house i think it would have been quite nice yeah i'm not the least bit ashamed of it it took sandon 13 months and eight tries before his portrait of george w bush became one of just
42 official presidential portraits in the white house collection i am pleased that my portrait brings an interesting symmetry to the white house collection it now starts and ends with a george w painted over a period of more than 220 years some of these portraits evoke napoleonic grandeur others everyday approachability john singer sergeant's portrait of teddy roosevelt looks you confidently in the eye greta kempton's harry truman projects midwestern humility while aaron shikler's mournful john f kennedy casts his gaze downward this is the great full-length portrait of george washington back in 2014 then white house curator bill
allman showed me the first picture of a president to hang in these hallowed halls gilbert stewart's iconic 1797 portrait of george washington hanging in the east room its played background during some of the most memorable moments in modern american history but this treasure was almost lost during the war of 1812 dolly madison and an enslaved man named paul jennings managed to take the eight by five foot portrait with them as they fled the white house shortly before it was burned by british troops this thing is really big it's not like you could just go and
run out with it now it hangs on a wire and you could actually pick it up if you had enough enough strength you'd have to be really good it was bolted to the wall so that's when they had to actually chop the frame open and take the painting out on its stretcher the painting would return to the rebuilt white house after the war but it was decades before anyone would think to hang another presidential portrait it was considered a home once again bill allman and it really wasn't treated quite as a place to revere the
people who had come in the job before you by 1857 when they decided to commission portraits of some of the missing presidents sensibilities had changed a little bit with the idea that the white house had become something of a public attraction and historic site the most famous one of all is this one of abraham lincoln boston-born artist george p a healey painted this portrait of abraham lincoln which hangs above the mantle in the state dining room healey was a contemporary of lincoln but he only saw him once so he painted this picture from photographs in
1962 first lady jacqueline kennedy highlighted that portrait during her televised tour of the white house the press got a preview today of the formal portraits of president and mrs kennedy nine years later president and mrs nixon hosted mrs kennedy and her children for a private unveiling of the portraits of herself and her late husband it was the only time she returned to the white house after his assassination it is startling some who saw today thought it almost haunting those portraits both by aaron shikler were controversial when they first arrived it does not show his eyes
said one of his best friends it's just not jack but now are among the most popular in the entire collection over the last three decades the public unveiling of an official presidential portrait has become something of an event in washington the announcer here said mr president why i fell back to where i comfortably was for eight years the former occupant invited back for a lighthearted often bipartisan affair perhaps the most important thing i can say to president mrs bush today is welcome home bill clinton hosted george h.w bush just two years after defeating him president
clinton and senator clinton welcome home george w bush did the same welcoming the clintons back when their portraits painted by artist simi knox were added to the white house collection in 2004 eight years later we may have our differences politically but the presidency transcends those differences it was george w bush's turn to come home dolly madison famously saved this portrait of the first george w now michelle if anything happens there's your man but the future of this tradition is in doubt an unveiling ceremony for the obama's official portraits at the trump white house has yet
to be scheduled i sit here as for john howard sandon he's still painting presidents and says even in the age of the digital camera a great portrait captures something that an iphone never will everybody every human being develops an image of himself a self-image and it's not the necessarily what people in your household see every day it's something other than that the portrait painter's goal is ultimate goal is to discern what the self-image is
