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Art in the White House: A Nation's Pride
Art for the President's House An Historic Perspective
by Doreen Bolger & David Park Curry
With
McKinley's assassination at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo,
New York, Vice President Theodore
Roosevelt took the oath of office. The White
House, now more than a hundred years old, entered a new era with
the Roosevelts, who loved the residence for its many associations. As
the President once responded when asked whether the Executive Mansion
should be abandoned to office space: "Mrs. Roosevelt and I are firmly of
the opinion that the President should live nowhere else than in the
historic White House." Historicism once again became the dominant ideal
for the State Rooms.
During the Roosevelts' tenure, in 1902, the prestigious firm of McKim,
Mead, & White began extensive renovations by sweeping away the exuberant
Victorian decorations--by then seen as free-wheeling incongruities--and
returning the mansion to a simpler, if equally stately, neoclassicism.
(At left is the East Room prior to the 1902 renovations.)
The Ground Floor Corridor and the rooms opening off it had been used as a
behind-the-scenes work area for years. As early as the Lincoln
Administration an aide had complained that the White House basement
reminded him of "something you have smelled in the edge of some swamp."
Now the elegant vaulted ceiling originally designed by James Hoban was
restored, transforming the Corridor into a gallery for the
First Ladies' portraits that had been collected at the end of the 19th
century.
Mrs.
Roosevelt wrote to McKim:
The President and I have consulted, and we hope it is possible for you
to put all the ladies of the White House, including myself, in the
downstairs corridor that the dressing rooms open on; also the busts. It
could then be called the picture gallery, and you know a name goes a long
way. I am afraid the Presidents will still have to hang in the red and
green rooms, and I suppose Washington and Mrs. Washington and Lincoln must
remain as before, in the east
room.
Although some critics objected to her decision to place the portraits of
First Ladies in a "basement" corridor, the general reaction was
favorable. "It seems to me it has rescued those admirable females from
oblivion," wrote Ellen Maurey Slayden, wife of a senator from Texas.
"The light is good, there is plenty of room and anyone who wants to gaze
at Mrs. Van Buren's
bobbing curls or Mrs.
Hayes' blue velvet dress 'all buttoned down before' can do it at
leisure without incommoding other people."
While the
Roosevelts paid homage to the past, they did not neglect the
present. Theobald Chartran, a then fashionable French portraitist who
had already recorded the signing of the peace between the United States
and Spain, came to Washington again to paint a magnificent, casually
posed portrait of Mrs.
Roosevelt in a large, wide-brimmed hat. The
genteel and self-assured sitter occupies a garden bench. The columns in
the background tell the viewer that Mrs. Roosevelt is on the White House
grounds. It is worth remarking that the Executive Mansion appears as a
recognizable backdrop in several First Lady portraits, but never in the
official image of a President. This is perhaps a reminder that, since
the Aesthetic movement, the fortunes of the White House fine arts
collection had been furthered more often by First Ladies than by
Presidents.
Chartran also painted a portrait of Roosevelt, but it was disliked by the
family and later destroyed. Archibald Butt, a close aide to Roosevelt
and chronicler of White House life, recalled:
I wonder what Chartran would think if he could see the portrait of the
President being destroyed...neither the President nor his wife has ever
liked the portrait. It was hung in the upper corridor, in the darkest
spot on the wall, and by the family it has always been called the Mewing
Cat.
In 1903 the commission for Roosevelt's portrait (shown at right) was
given to American expatriate John Singer Sargent. Perhaps the leading
international portraitist of his generation, Sargent was a departure from the
provincial American artists often selected during the previous century.
The President's pose reflects the artist's confidence; a believable
posture with little in the way of setting or accessories, it suggests the
vigor and charisma--perhaps even arrogance--of the man. Despite the
informal pose, Sargent himself described the portrait as one "in the
historical series of the Presidents of the United States." And President
Roosevelt had acknowledged Sargent's preeminence in a letter the
preceding year: "He is of course the one artist who should paint the
portrait of an American President."
While Sargent's may have been the official portrait of Roosevelt, the
popular President is represented by many other images, too. Roosevelt
was a President whose exploits captured the imaginations of both artists
and the public. Like his predecessors Washington and Lincoln, the
legendary Roosevelt has served as a focal point for the White House
collection.
For a decade and a half following Roosevelt's term--although Presidents
and First Ladies sat for distinguished portraitists--little attention was
paid to fine arts collecting at the White House. Then, in 1925 during
the Coolidge
Administration, Congress appointed an official who was
given the authority to accept gifts for the Executive Mansion with the
President's approval.
Mrs.
Coolidge herself chose a distinguished advisory committee that
included the fashionable residential architects Charles Adams Platt and
William Adams Delano as well as Robert W. DeForest, the founder of the
American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A plan for
"historical" State Rooms, with the involvement of the advisory panel,
illustrates subtle changes in the way the White House was now perceived.
The long-lasting interest in historical matters had fostered attention to
curatorial procedures, and the house was evolving into a museum as well
as a monument.
But in the Coolidge era the White House was not yet an art
museum. Although Mrs.
Coolidge's portrait captures her arrayed in the latest
fashion, the First Lady was more interested in adding colonial-style
furniture--inspired by period rooms in the American Wing--than she was in
collecting paintings and sculpture. In the hope that the American people
would aid in furnishing the Executive Mansion, she helped persuade
Congress to authorize the acquisition of appropriate antiques as gifts.
As with copied portraits, reproduction furniture sufficed when antiques
were not available.
A serious effort to document White House furnishings was led by the next
First Lady, Lou
Henry Hoover. An enthusiast of memorabilia and old
photographs, she occasionally directed her energies toward the collection
of paintings and sculpture. Mrs. Hoover agreed in 1930 that the White
House portraits be photographed and documented by researchers from the
prestigious Frick Art Reference Library. Researcher Katharine McCook
Knox's description of her own work on this project demonstrates a
professional attitude toward the White House and its history, reflecting
the enthusiasm for documentation characteristic of early efforts in the
field of American art history. Mrs. Knox recalled entering the White
House and glimpsing the portrait of Julia Gardner Tyler (shown at left) far
down a corridor:
I welcomed this opportunity of examining the back of the canvas,
somewhat to the wonderment of the nice electricians [who were working
nearby and removed the portrait from the wall]....On the back of the
canvas, Francesco Anelli had spelled the fair Julia's name Giulia, as in
the Italian manner. He dated the canvas 1848 and signed it F. Anelli.
The merchant stamped on the back the following: "J.W. Hawkhurst's Paint
and Art Store, 114 Grand Street, New York, Artists and Painters Brushes
and materials of every description."
The result of this research was a loose-leaf volume, presented to the
White House in 1931, and much used by the President's staff to answer
inquiries about works in the collection. The Frick provided photographs
of White House paintings for 38 years, a period when, as former curator
Clement E. Conger said, "the collection was insufficiently organized to
meet the requests of the public."
Mrs. Hoover made use of President
and
First Lady portraits in continuing
the renovations of the rooms. Though the portraits of George and Martha
Washington had been displayed in the Red Room since 1902, she had them
reinstalled in the stately East
Room. In transforming her second-floor
drawing room into the "Monroe Drawing Room," she installed a portrait of
Elizabeth
Kortright Monroe, copied in 1932, slightly more than a century
after that First Lady's death. A portrait of
Abraham Lincoln replaced a tapestry hung in the State
Dining Room during
Roosevelt's renovation, and one of John
Quincy Adams was hung prominently in the Green
Room. That room had finally been completed by the advisory
committee convened by Mrs. Coolidge.
The committee continued its work on the Red Room during the tenure of
Franklin
Roosevelt, choosing a number of presidential portraits to hang
on the walls. The creation of these period rooms, using professional
advisers, indicated a growing sophistication in the management of the
collection; procedures associated with museum curatorship were being adopted.
Even as late as the 1940s and 1950s a historical perspective still guided
collecting at the White
House. Harry
Truman, a devoted student of American history, proclaimed, "There is
really not anything new if you know what has gone before." Truman was
fascinated by the White House and
its former inhabitants. With the construction on the south front of the
second-floor balcony that came to be called the Truman balcony, he made
the first major change in the main block of the building since the
Jacksonian period. Even more dramatic was the total renovation of the
White House undertaken during his term. For more than three years,
beginning late in 1948, the Trumans lived in Blair House while the aged,
dangerously shaky house was gutted to its stone shell and rebuilt.
During Harry Truman's
Presidency the historical emphasis of the collection was maintained. In
1947 the White House acquired George
Healy's painting The Peacemakers (shown at left). It depicts the
conclusion of the Civil War, but the acquisition was laden with contemporary
significance, for another great conflict, World War II, had ended just
two years earlier. A more direct reminder of the war came with the 1949
gift of yet another Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington from a
couple whose son had died in World War II.
Since Truman's Presidency the White House has experienced few
architectural changes, but in the age of television it has assumed an even
greater symbolic importance for the American public. The collection
housed there has been expanded both in size and concept, while its
growth, care, and interpretation have been systematized.
In its post-World War II renovation the house had lost much of its
original patina. During the administration of John F. Kennedy a
concerted effort was made to recapture, even re-create, it.
Jacqueline Kennedy appeared before millions of Americans in a
televised tour of the
house, presenting plans for renovation. She sought the advice and
cooperation of antiquarians and collectors by appointing a Fine Arts
Committee chaired by Henry F. du Pont, founder of the Winterthur Museum,
the leading repository of early American decorative arts. New Yorker
James W. Fosburgh, who had been on the staff of The Frick Collection for
two decades, was named chairman of the special committee for White House
paintings. He worked tirelessly to build the collection, which was
significantly expanded during the Kennedy term.
An act of Congress, passed in 1961, made objects belonging to the White
House part of its permanent collections and designated the State Rooms as
having a museum character. The care and the growth of the collections,
previously left somewhat to chance, were finally formalized. In the same
year the Office of the Curator was established. For the first time truly
professional standards were applied to the works in the collection. The
nonprofit White House Historical Association was also formed that year to
enhance understanding and provide for the interpretation of the house and
its collections. The association's founding was followed in 1964 by that of the
Committee for the Preservation of the White House. To this group falls
the responsibility of advising the President on the acquisition, use, and
display of historic and artistic objects for the White House.
The very heroes and heroines who had been the centerpiece of the fine
arts collection--the
Presidents and
First Ladies--remained so. The clear favorites were Presidents
whose individual achievements symbolize
universal values of the nation: George
Washington, of course, and Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. In
recent years at
least ten images representing these illustrious Presidents have been
added to the collection, several by artists of the first rank.
Eventually, as more and more life portraits of actual White House
residents have been secured, the collection has also embraced likenesses
of those who helped build the residence itself. Additions have included
two portraits of architects who worked on the house--James Hoban and
Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Images of distinguished visitors to the
Executive Mansion have been collected as well.
Some paintings that may have temporarily hung in the White
House during earlier administrations have been recovered for the
collection. These include the Gilbert Stuart portraits of President
John Quincy Adams
and Mrs.
Adams and the Constantino Brumidi paintings, Liberty and
Union. Brumidi's works, featured in the Entrance Hall
redecorated by the Grants,
were removed by Mrs. Harrison's decorator in
1891. The pictures were rediscovered in 1978 by the new owners of the
home of the decorator in Connecticut and brought back to Washington.
The program begun by Mrs.
Kennedy endowed artistic quality with as much
weight as historic importance for building the White House collection,
and many of the artistic masterpieces we encounter today have been
acquired since that time. The emphasis on quality has inspired a number
of important gifts from leading collectors since 1961. Among these are
John Singer Sargent's The Mosquito Net (shown above), James McNeill
Whistler's Nocturne, Thomas Eakins's Ruth, and Mary Cassatt's Young
Mother and Two Children. James Fosburgh explained: "The White House
is the setting in which the Presidency of the United States is presented
to the world and must be a reflection of the best in American history and
art."
Under the guidelines established during the Kennedy
Administration and refined over time by the Committee for the
Preservation of the White House, the expansion of the collection has continued. The works acquired
by the White House represent the geographic diversity of the nation and
reflect the values and accomplishments of American society. Views of
picturesque scenery, familiar vacation haunts, and dramatic natural
wonders take the White House visitor from sea to shining sea. As is
generally true of traditional American art, the collection features more
scenes of leisure than of industry and only a few urban images. Many
examples celebrate old ways and bygone days in idealized fashion, and a
small gathering of still life paintings evokes the abundance of American
life. From representations of revered political leaders, the collection
has broadened to include images of the generic American hero: the
cowboy, symbol of independence, freedom, and self-reliance.
Nonfigurative work has never been a collecting goal, and virtually none
of the pictures in the collection depart from representational artistic
traditions.
From its limited origins in historicism the fine arts collection at the
Executive Mansion has grown to become "a reflection of the best in
American history and art." In recent years documentary emphasis has been
tempered increasingly by greater concern for aesthetics, introduced
through awareness of America's artistic achievements and supported by the
growth of scholarship in the field of art history. Not only the quality
but also the preservation and care of the collection are delegated to the
Office of the Curator. Since 1961 the standards applied to the holdings
of the White House have been those of the museum, not of the usual
domestic interior. The decorations and collections, enhanced and
expanded by each succeeding presidential generation, will continue to
evolve as we move into the next century, the third during which this
much-changed building has served its enduring function, as a home for our
nation's leader, a symbol of the office he holds, and a repository of art
for the American people.
Art for the President's House An Historical Perspective
Early - Middle 1800's
Middle - Late 1800's
The 1900's
Art in the White House: A Nation's Pride
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