A portrait of President Donald Trump in the Colorado Capitol will be taken down after the president dismissed the image as “truly the worst” and requested its removal.
The portrait was commissioned during Trump’s first term and has hung in the capitol rotunda’s hall of presidential portraits for almost six years.
“Sarah has always been passionate about painting portraits, being particularly intrigued by the depth and character found deeper in her subjects,” her website reads. “Sarah believes that the ultimate challenge is to capture the “personality, character and soul” of an individual in a two-dimensional format.”
“The portrait is not designed for just one faction of the population,” she told Times Recorder. “There will always be dissent, so pleasing one group will always inflame another. I consider a neutrally thoughtful, and non-confrontational, portrait allows everyone to reach their own conclusions in their own time, in addition to that approach being more durable over time.”
Her artistic decision at the time drew criticism from Democrats who did not look at the president the same way.
Colorado Senate Republicans led the effort to fund Trump’s portrait after Colorado Citizens for Culture, a nonprofit group responsible for commissioning presidential portraits, failed to secure enough donations.
In 2018, while Trump’s designated spot remained empty, an aide to then-House Speaker Crisanta Duran, a Democrat, helped an activist group sneak a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin into the Capitol. The portrait was placed on an easel beneath the vacant space reserved for Trump.
The other 43 presidential portraits in the Colorado rotunda were painted by Lawrence Williams. He died before he could add Obama’s portrait to the collection.
Colorado House Democrats said in a statement on Monday that the painting would be removed at the request of Republican lawmakers, adding “if the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that’s up to them.”
