In a recent interview with Philadelphia's Daily News, renowned portrait artist Nelson Shanks said that he snuck in a reference to Monica Lewinsky's notorious blue dress in his presidential portrait of President Bill Clinton.
Shanks—who has produced portraits for Princess Di, Pope John Paul II and Marisa Tomei, to a name a few—said he could never get Clinton's affair with Lewinsky "completely out of my mind," so he chose to work in a subtle reference to it by including a shadow of a blue dress that was hanging in his studio while he was working on the portrait. Calling Clinton "probably the most famous liar of all time," Shanks also chose not to include his wedding band in the painting.
"And so the Clintons hate the portrait," he said, even so far as to insist on having it removed from the National Portrait Gallery (a claim which the gallery denied when asked by the Daily News).
Shanks made the comments about the Clinton portrait when asked by the reporter which of his portraits he found "the hardest to capture." Shanks said Clinton was particularly tough:
Shanks: Clinton was hard. I'll tell you why. The reality is he's probably the most famous liar of all time. He and his administration did some very good things, of course, but I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting.
If you look at the left-hand side of it there's a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things. It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.
And so the Clintons hate the portrait. They want it removed from the National Portrait Gallery. They're putting a lot of pressure on them. [Reached by phone Thursday, a spokeswoman from the National Portrait Gallery denied that.]
Here's a clip of Lewinsky getting shamed by Barbara Walters for saving the blue dress to protect herself from possible retribution from the Clinton political machine:
