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What is the most iconic presidential portrait in American history?

By YPB Team

Paint on canvas, a cracked glass negative, a wall of green leaves. These are the pictures that fixed how a president is remembered.

  1. Healy's 'The Peacemakers' Lincoln — ranked #11
    Healy's 'The Peacemakers' Lincoln
    George Healy's 1868 painting of Lincoln listening to his generals aboard the River Queen.
    1000pts
  2. Kempton's Harry Truman — ranked #22
    Kempton's Harry Truman
    Greta Kempton's official portrait of a president who wanted to look like a bank manager.
    1000pts
  3. Lincoln's Cracked-Plate Portrait — ranked #33
    Lincoln's Cracked-Plate Portrait
    Alexander Gardner's 1865 photograph, the glass negative split across Lincoln's forehead.
    764pts
  4. Sargent's Theodore Roosevelt — ranked #44
    Sargent's Theodore Roosevelt
    John Singer Sargent's 1903 White House portrait, painted with Roosevelt gripping a staircase newel.
    764pts
  5. The Lansdowne Washington — ranked #55
    The Lansdowne Washington
    Gilbert Stuart's full-length 1796 Washington, the template for how a president should stand.
    647pts
  6. The Athenaeum Washington — ranked #66
    The Athenaeum Washington
    Stuart's unfinished 1796 head study — the face on every one-dollar bill since.
    647pts
  7. Brady's Cooper Union Lincoln — ranked #77
    Brady's Cooper Union Lincoln
    Mathew Brady's 1860 studio photograph, credited by Lincoln himself with helping elect him.
    647pts
  8. Rembrandt Peale's Jefferson — ranked #88
    Rembrandt Peale's Jefferson
    The 1800 portrait that fixed Jefferson's image for two centuries of textbooks.
    647pts
  9. Shikler's John F. Kennedy — ranked #99
    Shikler's John F. Kennedy
    Aaron Shikler's posthumous portrait of a president with his arms folded and his head down.
    647pts
  10. The Great Seal Washington — ranked #1010
    The Great Seal Washington
    The profile Washington used on coins and seals, taken from Jean-Antoine Houdon's life mask.
    647pts
  11. FDR's Unfinished Portrait — ranked #1111
    FDR's Unfinished Portrait
    Elizabeth Shoumatoff's watercolour, abandoned mid-sitting when Roosevelt collapsed in April 1945.
    503pts
  12. Peale's Washington at Princeton — ranked #1212
    Peale's Washington at Princeton
    Charles Willson Peale's 1779 general, painted from life while the war was still being lost.
    503pts
  13. Grant at City Point — ranked #1313
    Grant at City Point
    Mathew Brady's 1864 photograph of the general leaning against a tree, hat pushed back.
    503pts
  14. Earl's Andrew Jackson — ranked #1414
    Earl's Andrew Jackson
    Ralph E. W. Earl's portraits of Old Hickory, painted by an artist who lived in the White House.
    503pts
  15. Wiley's Barack Obama — ranked #1515
    Wiley's Barack Obama
    Kehinde Wiley's 2018 National Portrait Gallery painting, the sitter set in a wall of foliage.
    0pts
  16. Lincoln and Tad, 1865 — ranked #1616
    Lincoln and Tad, 1865
    Gardner's February 1865 photograph of the president reading with his youngest son.
    0pts

Comments 1

Gilbert Stuart's 1796 pose fixed how an American president gets painted, and the rival image is a glass negative cracked above the forehead: https://youpick.best/articles/washington-vs-lincoln-ranked

YP
ypb-team
Aug 21