President claims Sarah Boardman ‘must have lost her talent as she got older’, despite previous artwork of Barack Obama and George W. Bush
Donald Trump has called for a portrait of himself to be taken down from the Colorado State capitol, lashing out at the artist for “truly the worst” attempt to capture his features.
“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves,” the president wrote, but the Colorado portrait was “purposely distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before.”
The painting depicts the president with a “serious, thoughtful, non-confontational” expression, Sarah Boardman, the British artist, said after it was commissioned in 2018.
In the artwork, Trump’s lips are softly pursed, his cheeks and chin a little pudgy, and his hair less buoyant than in the president’s preferred portraits (several of which he subsequently posted).
“The artist also did President Obama,” Trump wrote, “and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst.”
He added: “She must have lost her talent as she got older.”
There was little sign of dissent when the artwork was unveiled in August 2019. John Cooke, a Republican state senator, said the piece showed “the strength of the American spirit.”
In the commissioning process, Ms Boardman presented the capitol building advisory committee with two sketches and four photographs to choose the basis of the image from. They agreed with her preferred option, shunning a snapshot of the president looking “marginally less confident.”
Speaking to the Colorado Times Recorder, the artist said her feelings on Trump played no part in the creative process.
“It is the portrait, likeness, and “essence” of the subject which I strive to portray,” she said. “Any personal feelings about any subject are not relevant and are left outside the studio per my training to ‘leave those emotions at the door’.”
Ms Boardman added there was always opposition to her portraits from political opponents of the president in question.
Sarah Boardman’s artwork has been sharply criticised by her subject, Trump Credit: AP
“There will always be anger at a president from one side or the other. It is human nature,” she said.
But she said the anger was “directed at the subject, not the actual piece of art, as it is/will be with this portrait of Trump.”
On Sunday night, the president upended this status quo. Making the point about the kind of representations he prefers, he posted the official portrait from his second term in which he appears with his jaw clenched, chin tucked in and eyes steeled below a determined frown.
In Mar-a-Lago, a painting dubbed The Visionary shows the young president in tennis whites and bathed in glorious light. The artist Ralph Wolfe Cowan was known for his depictions of monarchs.
‘The Visionary’ greets visitors to Mar-a-lago Credit: Ralph Wolfe Cowan
“Nobody ever dislikes my portraits,” Cowan told Town and Country magazine. “I know how to make them ‘healthy’ is the way I put it.”
In his complaint on TruthSocial about the Colorado portrait, Trump said: “I would much prefer not having a picture than this one.”
The president claims that “many people from Colorado have called and written to complain.”
“I am speaking on their behalf to the radical Left governor, Jared Polis… to take it down. Jared should be ashamed of himself.”
A spokesman for the governor refused to say whether the painting would be removed in a statement to Denver news outlet 9news.
Polis was “surprised to learn the president of the United States is an aficionado of our Colorado state capitol and its artwork,” they said.
“We appreciate the president and everyone’s interest in our capitol building and are always looking for any opportunity to improve our visitor experience.”
In 2018, the Colorado Citizens for Culture, a grassroots group that raises funds for presidential portraits, said that nobody had donated a cent towards a depiction of Trump.
Soon afterwards a Left-wing activist snuck into the capitol and hung a portrait of Vladimir Putin on an easel in front of the empty slot for Trump.
Outraged, Kevin Grantham, then the Republican president of the state senate, launched a crowdfunding campaign for a new portrait that hit its target within 32 hours.
Putin gave Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, a “beautiful” portrait of Trump, commissioned from a leading Russian artist, Witkoff said in an interview this weekend.
