29 Portraits of politicians

Alexander Hamilton is a 1792 full-length portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull. It is one of multiple paintings John Trumbull made of Alexander Hamilton.

The Athenaeum Portrait, also known as The Athenaeum, is an unfinished painting by Gilbert Stuart of former United States President George Washington. It was created in 1796, and is considered to be Stuart's most notable work. The painting depicts Washington at age 65 on a brown background. It served as the model for the engraving that would be used for the United States one-dollar bill.

The Barack Obama "Hope" poster is an image of Barack Obama designed by artist Shepard Fairey. The image was widely described as iconic and came to represent Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. It is a stylized stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, beige and blue, with the word "progress", "hope", or "change" below.

The Barack Obama "Joker" poster is a heavily manipulated and doctored image of former United States President Barack Obama, designed by Firas Alkhateeb in January 2009, that was adopted by some critics of the Obama administration and described as the most famous anti-Obama image. The image portrays Obama as comic book supervillain Joker, based on the portrayal by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (2008). Alkhateeb has said the image was not intended to make a political statement. He uploaded the image to the photo-sharing website Flickr, from where it was downloaded by an unknown individual who added the caption "socialism".

Two oil paintings depicting the then-Taoiseach of Ireland Brian Cowen in the nude were briefly displayed in Dublin art galleries in March 2009. The response of the media, politicians and the Garda Síochána led to a sustained controversy referred to by some as Portraitgate.

The first official gubernatorial portrait of Jerry Brown by portrait artist Don Bachardy was painted and unveiled in 1984. The painting commemorated American politician Jerry Brown's first two terms as Governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and has remained controversial since its unveiling.

Clinton Family Portrait is an oil painting on canvas by American artist Larry D. Alexander from Dermott, Arkansas, USA. It was created in 1995 and given as a gift to then U.S. President Bill Clinton who is also a native of Arkansas. It is a unique painting in that Alexander has done very few known oil paintings. Most of his paintings are done in acrylics, and there are a few done in watercolors. This portrait is a unique blend of cartoon likeness and realism. It is now a part of the permanent collection at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Congress Voting Independence is a painting by Robert Edge Pine showing the interior of Independence Hall, Philadelphia, and contains the portraits of most of the signers of the United States Declaration of Independence. The artist worked on the painting from 1784 until his death in 1788. The painting is unfinished. It currently is held in Independence Hall, Philadelphia.

Visual depictions of Kim Il-sung have been commonplace in North Korea since the 1940s following the example of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in China. The display of Kim Il-sung portraits was made mandatory at homes in the 1970s. Gradually, they have become mandatory in certain public places as well, such as factories, airports, railway stations, and rail and subway carriages. Portraits of Kim Jong-il have been hung next to Kim Il-sung since the late 1970s. A portrait of Kim Jong-un was displayed for the first time in public in 2018.

The Lansdowne portrait is an iconic life-size portrait of George Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796. It depicts the 64-year-old President of the United States during his final year in office. The portrait was a gift to former British Prime Minister William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, and spent more than 170 years in England.

There are 130 known photographs of Abraham Lincoln.Lincoln's features were the despair of every artist who undertook his portrait. The writer saw nearly a dozen, one after another, soon after the first nomination to the presidency, attempt the task. They put into their pictures the large, rugged features, and strong, prominent lines; they made measurements to obtain exact proportions; they "petrified" some single look, but the picture remained hard and cold. Even before these paintings were finished it was plain to see that they were unsatisfactory to the artists themselves, and much more so to the intimate friends of the man this was not he who smiled, spoke, laughed, charmed. The picture was to the man as the grain of sand to the mountain, as the dead to the living. Graphic art was powerless before a face that moved through a thousand delicate gradations of line and contour, light and shade, sparkle of the eye and curve of the lip, in the long gamut of expression from grave to gay, and back again from the rollicking jollity of laughter to that serious, far away look that with prophetic intuitions beheld the awful panorama of war, and heard the cry of oppression and suffering. There are many pictures of Lincoln; there is no portrait of him.

Mirth & Girth is a portrait painting by School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) student David K. Nelson, Jr., depicting the recently deceased popular African-American mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington wearing only a bra, G-string, garter belt and stockings. After a brief showing at a May 11, 1988 private student exhibition in the Art Institute, angry African-American aldermen, including Ald. Allan Streeter, Ald. Bobby Rush and Ald. Dorothy Tillman, arrived with Chicago Police Department officers and confiscated the painting, triggering a First Amendment and race relations crisis and a civil lawsuit.

Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg is a 1790 portrait by Joseph Wright, now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. It depicts Muhlenberg in his position as the first Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

A Peace Conference at the Quai d'Orsay is an oil-on-canvas painting by Irish artist William Orpen, completed in 1919. It was one of the paintings commissioned from Orpen to commemorate the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The work is held by the Imperial War Museum in London.

Portrait of Charles Sumner is an 1873 oil on canvas portrait painting by Walter Ingalls, now in United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. It is one of the paintings that possibly suffered damage from tear gas and pepper spray during the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.

Portrait of John C. Calhoun is a circa 1858 oil on canvas portrait painting by Henry F. Darby, now in United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. It is one of the paintings that possibly suffered damage from tear gas and pepper spray during the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.

Beginning with painter Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington, it has been traditional for the president of the United States to have an official portrait taken during their time in office, most commonly an oil painting. This tradition has continued to modern times, although since the adoption of photography as a widely used and reliable technology, the official portrait may also be a photograph.

President Barack Obama is a 2018 portrait of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, by the artist Kehinde Wiley for the National Portrait Gallery.

The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28 June 1919 is an oil-on-canvas painting by Irish artist William Orpen, completed in 1919. It was one of the paintings commissioned from Orpen to commemorate the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919. The work is held by the Imperial War Museum in London.

The Spear is a painting by Cape Town-based South African artist Brett Murray. Put on public display in 2012, it depicts the then South African President Jacob Zuma, his genitals revealed, in a standing pose reminiscent of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The painting triggered a defamation lawsuit by Zuma's party, the African National Congress (ANC).

In 1954, the English artist Graham Sutherland was commissioned to paint a full-length portrait of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom. Sutherland received 1,000 guineas in compensation for the painting, a sum funded by donations from members of the House of Commons and House of Lords. The painting was presented to Churchill by both Houses of Parliament at a public ceremony in Westminster Hall on his 80th birthday on 30 November 1954.

The unfinished portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt is a watercolor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, by Elizabeth Shoumatoff. Shoumatoff was commissioned to paint a portrait of President Roosevelt and started her work around noon on April 12, 1945. At lunch, Roosevelt complained of a headache and subsequently collapsed. The president, who had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage (stroke), died later that day.

The Visionary is a 1989 painting of American businessman and (later) U.S. President Donald Trump by Ralph Wolfe Cowan. It hangs in Trump's Palm Beach, Florida, residence of Mar-a-Lago.

Washington at Princeton is a 1779 painting by Charles Willson Peale, showing George Washington after the Battle of Princeton. The original was commissioned by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania for its council chamber in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Peale made eight copies of the painting. The original, now owned by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, was completed in early 1779, when Washington sat for Peale in Philadelphia.

General George Washington at Trenton is a large full-length portrait in oil painted in 1792 by the American artist John Trumbull of General George Washington at Trenton, New Jersey, on the night of January 2, 1777, during the American Revolutionary War. This is the night after the Battle of the Assunpink Creek, also known as the Second Battle of Trenton, and before the decisive victory at the Battle of Princeton the next day. The artist considered this portrait "the best certainly of those which I painted." The portrait is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, an 1806 gift of the Society of the Cincinnati in Connecticut. It was commissioned by the city of Charleston, South Carolina, but was rejected by the city, resulting in Trumbull painting another version.

George Washington is a large full-length oil painted by American artist John Trumbull in 1790.

Washington at Verplanck's Point is a full-length portrait in oil painted in 1790 by the American artist John Trumbull of General George Washington at Verplanck's Point on the North River in New York during the American Revolutionary War. The background depicts the September 14, 1782 review of Continental Army troops Washington staged there as an honor for the departing French commander Comte de Rochambeau and his army.

The Washington Family by Edward Savage is a life-sized group portrait of the Washington family, including U.S. President George Washington, First Lady Martha Washington, two of her grandchildren and a black servant, most likely an enslaved man whose identity was not recorded. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., presently displays the large painting.

George Washington, also entitled George Washington and William Lee, is a full-length portrait in oil painted in 1780 by the American artist John Trumbull during the American Revolutionary War. General George Washington stands near his enslaved servant William Lee, overlooking the Hudson River in New York, with West Point and ships in the background. Trumbull, who once served as an aide-de-camp to Washington, painted the picture from memory while studying under Benjamin West in London. He finished it before his arrest for high treason in November. The portrait, measuring 36 in × 28 in, is on view in Gallery 753 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Originally in the possession of the de Neufville family of the Netherlands, it was bequeathed to the museum by Charles Allen Munn in 1924.