WHAT THESE 5 ARTWORKS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE COLLECTION TELL US ABOUT AMERICA

 By Isaac Kaplan and Tess Thackara

The White House collection of art may call to mind portraits of presidents through the ages, framed and hung along the corridors of power. But the collection also includes some curious and illuminating works that serve as reminders of the United States’ complex and loaded history, and its shifting values across the decades. We selected a handful of works that reveal pivotal moments from America’s past and remind us—as the country embarks on the most divisive election cycle of recent history—that it’s one we all share.

Left: Charles Bird King, Sharitahrish (Wicked Chief), Pawnee), 1822. Right: Charles Bird King, Monchousia (White Plume), Kansa, 1822. Images courtesy of the White House Collection/White House Historical Association.

These portraits of Native American chiefs are two of five housed in the White House collection, painted by Bird King when 17 leaders from various tribes visited President Monroe in Washington D.C. from 1821 to 1822. Monroe intended for these meetings to showcase the strength of white settlers and to encourage the dissipation of any further resistance to their power. Peace medals, given by Monroe, hang around the necks of these two chiefs, Sharitahrish and Monchousia. Though they are painted as noble heroes—Sharitahrish appearing to lord over the land behind him—the portraits convey nothing of the extraordinary cruelty suffered by Native Americans at the hands of European settlers. Bird King’s works serve as one of the few reminders in the White House collection that American independence came at the expense of the country’s first peoples, who fell victim to genocide—and who continue to suffer poverty, poor health, and discrimination today.  ………….

George Peter Alexander Healy, The Peacemakers, 1868. Image courtesy of the White House Collection/White House Historical Association.

In this intensely charged portrait of the Civil War’s Union heros, Alexander Healy captures a meeting that took place between President Lincoln, Generals William T. Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant, and Admiral David Porter in the cabin of Lincoln’s steamer boat, River Queen, just one month before the bloody ideological war came to a close. General Sherman—the visionary, firebrand general to the left—leads a discussion about the terms for peace while the others ruminate on his words. Depicted here as dignified, intellectual leaders, the four iconic American figures are framed by a patterned carpet and curtains in muted shades of red, white, and blue. A rainbow seen through the cabin window provides a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of the impending peace to come after the great storm of America’s battle to define the country’s values has passed…………

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