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More On Presidential Portraiture —
Nine Great Twentieth Century Examples
A Second Follow-Up To The Wall Street Journal
Grover Cleveland, 1899
Anders Zorn.
The National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
D.C.
However, Sargent had at least one
superb example of twentieth-century
Presidential Impressionism before
him when he arrived in 1903 for the
Roosevelt assignment. The great Swedish
master Anders Zorn (1860-1920) had
been there before him, painting Grover
Cleveland in 1899 (Zorn returned to
the White House in 1912 to paint William
Howard Taft). Far from choosing a
classical or "power" pose,
Zorn shows the portly Cleveland seated
by a window, pausing in his perusal
of some picture books that lie open
before him on a table, obviously in
the residential part of the White
House. The painting is executed with
Zorn's well-known dash and vigor,
with an amazingly bright and vivid
palette. If anything, we are given
Cleveland the sensualist and lover
of fine things. No Roman power here.
Click portrait to enlarge.
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