Theodore Roosevelt by John Singer Sargent
Today is “Presidents Day” here in the U.S. — originally “Washington’s Birthday”, but now an all-purpose Washington and Lincoln birthday holiday, marked primarily by aggressively advertised sales of mattresses and cars. (Maybe that says something about U.S. presidents, I don’t know.)
Though perhaps not one of Sargent’s most memorable paintings, this portrait of the 26th U.S. president certainly counts as one of the best official presidential portraits. For a full array of official portraits, see this slide show feature on whitehouse.gov.
There is fairly large image of this painting on Wikimedia Commons.
I’ve covered U.S. presidential portraits before here on Lines and Colors, including those by Gilbert Stuart (and here), Charles Wilson Peale and George Healy.
