Free Republic

Over the weekend, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an interview with a renowned local artist named Nelson Shanks, whose portfolio includes the official painting of Bill Clinton hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. (Sidenote: during my time as a speechwriter for George W. Bush, I learned that 43 loved to open any set of remarks where he was having his portrait unveiled with “Welcome to my hanging.” For some reason, I always found that endearing). Anyway, Shanks, who we can only presume has figured out that publicly slighting a Democratic president is basically the royal road to a Fox News contributor...

RENOWNED Bucks County portrait artist Nelson Shanks has painted everyone from Princess Diana to President Bill Clinton and from Pope John Paul II to Marisa Tomei. He and his wife, Leona, are the founders of Studio Incamminati, an art school on 12th Street near Callowhill. On a recent Friday, as the north light of a chilly afternoon flooded his Andalusia studio, Shanks, 77, chain smoked cigarettes and drank Diet Cokes while painting Gabrielle, a beautiful young belly dancer, on a 7-by-5-foot canvas. Following his 7-hour session with Gabrielle, Shanks spoke with Stephanie Farr about a hidden secret in his portrait...

HEY CLINTON! (RELATIVE) SIZE DOESN'T MATTER. by Mia T, 4.27.06   "I thought of the grand size of this. Then I realized that if you go to the White House and look at all the portraits of the presidents, there are some that are so big they have to be hung in a special space down in the ground floor and if you really look at the size of the presidents' portraits, there are [sic] an inverse relationship to their importance to the country and American history. So I'm at least apprehensive about that." bill clinton National Portrait Gallery,...