A surprising influence on Obama’s portrait: Abraham Lincoln

[David Lockmiller]

A surprising influence on Obama’s portrait: Abraham Lincoln (Washington Post)

“Barack Obama” by Kehinde Wiley, oil on canvas, 2018. (National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Institution)

Wiley’s portrait shows a serious man sitting on the edge of a carved armchair, arms crossed, looking directly ahead, wearing a suit with an open-collar shirt. Wiley, beyond his skill as a portraitist, is a fabulous student of art history. It comes as a surprise — or perhaps no surprise — that his portrait of Obama is a riff (presumably meaning, a distinct variation) on George P.A. Healy’s portrait of Abraham Lincoln. There, Healy, like Wiley, set the president in a space without distractions and did not include the usual cast of props that mark official portraits of men: desks, papers, columns, etc. Healy’s portrait usually hangs in the State Dining Room of the White House and can be seen almost daily in news photographs as the backdrop to large presidential gatherings.

Wiley’s portrait of Obama, appropriately unveiled on Lincoln’s birthday, channels the Healy painting, especially the old-style chair, the simple setting, the alert pose and thoughtful expression. Wiley’s Obama, however, is not lost in thought like Healy’s Lincoln, but instead looks outward and leans slightly forward, as if waiting for your next word. And instead of the darkness that threatens to engulf Lincoln, Wiley substituted an effusion of plants.

Abraham Lincoln is an 1869 oil-on-canvas painting by George Peter Alexander Healy of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States.

In the painting, Lincoln is observed alone, leaning forward, with his elbow on his knee and his head resting on his hand. The pose is taken from Healy's 1868 painting, The Peacemakers, which depicts the historic March 28, 1865, strategy session by the Union high command, composed of William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, David Dixon Porter, and Lincoln, aboard the steamboat the River Queen during the final days of the American Civil War.

Lincoln sat for Healy in August 1864, and Healy began working on his sketches to create a portrait of Lincoln. After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, Healy conceived of The Peacemakers, which he completed in 1868. In 1869, Healy decided to create a new portrait removing the members of Lincoln's high command to focus only on Lincoln. He painted the portrait in Paris.

In March 3, 1869, an act of Congress that authorized the commission of a portrait of Lincoln to hang in the White House. As a result, Healy sent it to Washington, hoping it would be chosen. However, Ulysses S. Grant, then the President of the United States selected a portrait painted by William F. Cogswell. Robert Todd Lincoln, Lincoln's son, purchased Healy's portrait. He said of Healy's portrait: "I have never seen a portrait of my father which is to be compared with it in any way." The portrait was owned by Robert Todd Lincoln's widow, Mary Harlan Lincoln, who bequeathed it to her daughter, Mamie Lincoln Isham, with the understanding that it would be given to the White House when Mamie Lincoln died. It entered the White House collection after the 1938 death of Mamie Lincoln Isham. It hangs in the State Dining Room of the White House.

First Lady Lady Bird Johnson identified the painting as one of her favorites in the White House. Though Richard Nixon had moved the portrait from the State Dining Room, replacing it with Palisades on the Hudson, Gerald Ford had the portrait moved back to its longstanding placement.

A reproduction of the portrait hangs in the Illinois Executive Mansion in Springfield, Illinois and the Minnesota House of Representatives chamber behind the speaker's chair.