The artist behind ‘the worst’ Trump portrait defends her work

After President Trump said how much he disliked a painted portrait of him hanging in the Colorado state Capitol, the artist now says that his knock to her abilities has threatened her livelihood of many decades.

Sarah Boardman painted the portrait for the Capitol building in Denver, where it hung starting in 2019, after being commissioned during Trump’s first term. Other presidential paintings line the building’s rotunda walls, including Boardman’s depiction of former President Barack Obama.

Last month, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the portrait “was purposefully distorted.”

While he praised her portrait of President Obama, Trump said “the one on me is truly the worst.”

He went on to degrade Boardman’s talents, without naming her. “She must have lost her talent as she got older,” the president wrote. “I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one.”

Shortly after Trump’s insult, state Republicans had the portrait removed.

Boardman responded to Trump’s comments over the weekend in a statement on her website. The Colorado Springs-based painter said the president’s words called into question her “intentions, integrity, and abilities.”

She said she created the rendering without political bias or any intention to distort or caricature the president. Boardman said her portrait of Trump received overwhelmingly positive feedback during the six years that it hung in the Capitol building’s rotunda, but that Trump’s recent comments “are now directly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years which now is in danger of not recovering.”

According her website’s biography, Boardman studied painting in Germany on an apprenticeship in which she practiced the techniques of the “Old Masters” — a group of famous European artists dating back to the Renaissance, such as Rembrandt. She’s also painted former President George W. Bush, a district court judge and members of the U.S. military. But, her bio says, some of her favorite subjects are “wonderfully ordinary people.”

The artist didn’t elaborate on the consequences to her business.

Republicans raised $11,000 in donations to commission the oil painting, Colorado Public Radio reported.

Colorado state Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen said he requested the portrait’s removal so that it could be replaced with a “contemporary likeness” of Trump. As CPR reported, “He said he was following a precedent set by the country’s only other president to serve nonconsecutive terms, Grover Cleveland, who is represented in the gallery by a single portrait from his second term.”

Trump follows other presidents who have disliked their portraits.

Theodore Roosevelt, for example, was disappointed in French artist Théobald Chartran’s depiction of him from 1902, WETA reported. The Roosevelt family felt the painting cast the proud, nature-loving leader as meek, and nicknamed the work the “mewing cat.”

And Lyndon B. Johnson called his portrait the “ugliest thing I ever saw.” Peter Hurd, a successful artist who painted the work, dismissed the president’s “very damn rude” behavior in his comments to the press, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

A portrait for Richard Nixon quietly went up in the White House in 1981, years after his resignation over the Watergate scandal. He wasn’t happy with the painting and in 1984, he instead donated one done by James Anthony Wills, who had painted President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s portrait. “He liked it better,” a federal official told The Washington Post.