# What is the most iconic presidential portrait in American history?

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

*By YPB Team · Published August 19, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-most-iconic-presidential-portrait-in-american-history*

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## Current results (2 votes)

1. **Healy's 'The Peacemakers' Lincoln** — 50% (1 votes · score 1000/1000)
   George Healy's 1868 painting of Lincoln listening to his generals aboard the River Queen.
2. **Kempton's Harry Truman** — 50% (1 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Greta Kempton's official portrait of a president who wanted to look like a bank manager.
3. **Lincoln's Cracked-Plate Portrait** — 0% (0 votes · score 764/1000)
   Alexander Gardner's 1865 photograph, the glass negative split across Lincoln's forehead.
4. **Sargent's Theodore Roosevelt** — 0% (0 votes · score 764/1000)
   John Singer Sargent's 1903 White House portrait, painted with Roosevelt gripping a staircase newel.
5. **The Lansdowne Washington** — 0% (0 votes · score 647/1000)
   Gilbert Stuart's full-length 1796 Washington, the template for how a president should stand.
6. **The Athenaeum Washington** — 0% (0 votes · score 647/1000)
   Stuart's unfinished 1796 head study — the face on every one-dollar bill since.
7. **Brady's Cooper Union Lincoln** — 0% (0 votes · score 647/1000)
   Mathew Brady's 1860 studio photograph, credited by Lincoln himself with helping elect him.
8. **Rembrandt Peale's Jefferson** — 0% (0 votes · score 647/1000)
   The 1800 portrait that fixed Jefferson's image for two centuries of textbooks.
9. **Shikler's John F. Kennedy** — 0% (0 votes · score 647/1000)
   Aaron Shikler's posthumous portrait of a president with his arms folded and his head down.
10. **The Great Seal Washington** — 0% (0 votes · score 647/1000)
   The profile Washington used on coins and seals, taken from Jean-Antoine Houdon's life mask.
11. **FDR's Unfinished Portrait** — 0% (0 votes · score 503/1000)
   Elizabeth Shoumatoff's watercolour, abandoned mid-sitting when Roosevelt collapsed in April 1945.
12. **Peale's Washington at Princeton** — 0% (0 votes · score 503/1000)
   Charles Willson Peale's 1779 general, painted from life while the war was still being lost.
13. **Grant at City Point** — 0% (0 votes · score 503/1000)
   Mathew Brady's 1864 photograph of the general leaning against a tree, hat pushed back.
14. **Earl's Andrew Jackson** — 0% (0 votes · score 503/1000)
   Ralph E. W. Earl's portraits of Old Hickory, painted by an artist who lived in the White House.
15. **Wiley's Barack Obama** — 0% (0 votes · score 323/1000)
   Kehinde Wiley's 2018 National Portrait Gallery painting, the sitter set in a wall of foliage.
16. **Lincoln and Tad, 1865** — 0% (0 votes · score 323/1000)
   Gardner's February 1865 photograph of the president reading with his youngest son.

Tags: usa, art, portrait, presidents