President Donald Trump took to social media March 23 to complain about what he called a “distorted” portrait of himself hanging in the Colorado State Capitol’s Gallery of Presidents.
“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social.
The portrait, commissioned during Trump’s first term, was paid for with a Republican-led fundraising effort and approved by Colorado Republicans before it was put on display in 2019.
Former state Senate President Kevin Grantham, a Republican, raised nearly $11,000 in an online fundraiser for the portrait in the summer of 2018 after he learned no donations had been received to fund the painting more than a year into Trump’s first term.
The unveiling of the portrait on August 1, 2019 — at an event hosted by the Colorado Senate Republicans and artist Sarah Boardman of Colorado Springs — was described as nonpartisan by organizers.
“I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one,” Trump wrote, asking that Gov. Jared Polis “take it down.”
Trump’s social media post complained about Boardman, who also painted former President Barack Obama’s portrait in the Capitol’s Gallery of Presidents.
“The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst,” Trump wrote. “She must have lost her talent as she got older.”
Boardman previously told The Denver Post it was important to her that both Trump and Obama looked apolitical in their portraits because the gallery is meant to tell the story of the US and not one specific president.
The other 43 presidential portraits in the Colorado gallery were painted by Lawrence Williams. He died before he could continue the collection with Obama’s portrait.
In 2018, after Colorado Citizens for Culture’s initial effort had failed to raise any money for a Trump portrait, an aide to then-House Speaker Crisanta Duran, a Democrat, helped a liberal political group sneak a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin into the Capitol, where it was displayed on an easel beneath the spot reserved for Trump.
Grantham launched his own fundraising campaign days later.
—Lauren Penington, The Denver Post (TNS)
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