George W. Bush Painted Former House Speaker John Boehner as a Parting Gift—and Now It’s His Official Portrait

A surprising and intriguing tidbit has emerged from a recent
interview with John Boehner, the former speaker of the United
States House of Representatives. It turns out that Boehner asked
former US president-turned-artist George W. Bush to paint his
portrait as he was leaving his Congressional post in 2015.

According to Barstool Sports journalist Matthew Cothron,
who conducted the interview with Kate Mannion, the portrait
will hang in a portion
of the Capitol building called the Speaker’s Lobby of Congress, a
marble-floored room outside the House Chamber where representatives
come and go and meet with constituents.

Cothron tweeted:

“Me
and @katebarstool interviewed
John Boehner yesterday. He let us see something that no one else
had before. When he was leaving the position of Speaker of the
House, he asked President George W Bush to paint his official
portrait. Here it is.”

In a reply, Kate Mannion
noted that Boehner initially wasn’t too pleased with the portrait.
When Bush sent him a text of the finished painting, he was
surprised to see the former president had given him all white hair.
“And so a few hours later W sent this updated salt n pepper
version,” Mannion wrote.

Cothron said Bush did not
intend for the painting to become Boehner’s official portrait, but
Boehner was swiftly convinced.

An admitted “art agnostic” for much of his life, Bush—who served
as the 43rd US president from 2000 to 2008—initially kept his
painting hobby under wraps. But in early 2013, the
hacker Guccifer unceremoniously leaked the
former president’s handiwork to the world. (For that and other
related offenses, he was ultimately sentenced to four years in
prison in 2016.) The paintings, which included self
portraits of Bush in the shower, received a surprisingly
(but not universally) warm
reception.

More of Bush’s art will soon be on view in DC. He has a solo
show opening October 7 at the Kennedy Center featuring 66 portraits
of veterans who have served in the US armed forces since the
attacks of September 11, 2001. Called “Portraits of Courage,” the
exhibition was previously on view at the Presidential Library and
Museum in Dallas and comprises portraits Bush made of veterans who
were injured in the so-called War on Terror, the global conflict
surrounding the Iraq War, which his administration notoriously
played a role in instigating. (The New Yorker
dubbed the works “Painted Atonements.”)

Bush began painting after he left the White House, taking weekly
lessons to improve his technique. He joked with his art
teacher: “There’s a Rembrandt trapped in this body—your job is
to find it.”

Cothron did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The post George W. Bush Painted Former House Speaker John
Boehner as a Parting Gift—and Now It’s His Official Portrait
appeared first on artnet News.