Not all state capitols have a collection of presidential portraits, but Colorado is proud to be one that does. Now, however, President Donald Trump has pushed for his portrait to be removed.
“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday night. “I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one.”
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Trump said that “many people” from Colorado have complained about the portrait to him: “In fact, they are actually angry about it!” He added that he’s contacted Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis (whom Trump called a “Radical Left Governor” who is “extremely weak on Crime”) to take the portrait down. “Jared should be ashamed of himself!” Trump concluded.
A spokesperson for the governor’s office told Denver news outlet 9News on Sunday that Polis was “surprised to learn the President of the United States is an aficionado of our Colorado State Capitol and its artwork. … We appreciate the President and everyone’s interest in our capitol building and are always looking for any opportunity to improve our visitor experience.”
On Monday, the Associated Press reported that the portrait will be taken down at the request of Colorado State Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Republican, who asked that Trump’s portrait be replaced by one “that depicts his contemporary likeness.” Colorado Democrats joined Republicans in approving an order to staff to remove the portrait from the Capitol gallery and store it in a secure location until further notice, saying in a statement: “If the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that’s up to them.”
The reality is it wasn’t Polis who commissioned the Trump portrait in the first place—nor any political opponent of the President. And it’s actually been up for years. Here’s what to know.
Funding for the portraits in the Colorado State Capitol typically comes from private donations collected by Colorado Citizens for Culture, a grassroots organization supporting the arts in the state. During Trump’s first term, the group needed to raise $10,000 to commission a portrait of him, but in 2018, the organization’s president Jay Seller said not a single donation had come in.
In July that year, a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin was displayed on an easel in front of the empty spot where Trump’s portrait was expected to hang, after a member of nonprofit progressive advocacy organization ProgressNow Colorado snuck in. Katie March, the Democratic legislative staffer who swiped in the activist had her security clearances stripped and faced disciplinary action. “We hope that public awareness has been raised over the danger of Russian influence over the President of the United States,” ProgressNow Colorado’s executive director Ian Silverii told 9News. “Next time we’ll use the front door.”
The stunt ignited anger among Republicans, making national and international headlines, but it also highlighted the absence of Trump’s official portrait. Republican Kevin Grantham, then-President of the state senate, launched a GoFundMe to raise funds for a portrait. Within about 32 hours, the campaign met its $10,000 goal through donations from about 200 donors that included several notable state Republicans as well as former Democrat state representative Dan Pabon, who told Colorado Public Radio: “The hall of portraits of presidents is a tour showcase for any school-aged students coming through here, and I just wanted to make sure that when they came through they had the full experience of all the presidents that have been elected.”
During the portrait’s August 2019 unveiling ceremony at the State Capitol, which was billed as a nonpartisan event though hosted by Colorado’s Senate Republicans, Grantham called the crowdfunding “fitting” for a “populist” such as Trump.
Sarah A. Boardman, a British-born artist based in Colorado Springs, was commissioned to paint the portrait. Boardman had also painted the portrait of Barack Obama, after Lawrence Williams, the artist who had painted all 43 previous presidential portraits, died in 2003. Boardman said at the unveiling ceremony that she tried to match the classical realist style of Williams’ paintings and that it took around four months to complete the painting of Trump, which was based on a photograph voted on and approved by the Capitol Building Advisory Committee.
“My portrait of President Trump has been called thoughtful, non-confrontational, not angry, not happy, not tweeting,” Boardman said at the time. “In five, 10, 15, 20 years, he will be another President on the wall who is only historical background, and he needs to look neutral.”
Grantham, who is now a county commissioner and remains a supporter of Trump on social media, told TIME in an interview on Monday that he was “a little surprised” by Trump’s complaint about the portrait. “It’s been six years since we put that portrait up, and we haven’t heard any dissent over it—in fact, quite the opposite. … People have said they liked it.”
While he wasn’t part of the conversations behind the recent decision to remove and replace the portrait, Grantham said several people did reach out to him to see how he feels, the first being the governor, whom he says agreed that it was “not a big deal.”
Grantham added that Polis wasn’t the governor when he started the GoFundMe campaign and that Polis had no involvement in the process of commissioning or unveiling the portrait. Grantham said he is “sorry to see” Trump “going off of misinformation given to him or maybe making assumptions” about what happened.
Nevertheless, Grantham said he’s “OK” with the decision to remove and replace the portrait: “If the subject of the painting doesn’t really like the painting, why would we leave it up? If he sees something wrong with it, he doesn’t think it’s a fair characterization of him, or [it] just simply doesn’t meet his fancy, why would we go to any extraordinary lengths to keep it up? Let’s remove it, let’s reorganize tomorrow, and let’s talk about what we do now from this point forward. Let’s put a portrait up that works for both the people of Colorado and the President of the United States.”
Grantham added that Boardman, who did not respond to TIME’s request for comment, is “a really, really good person and a good artist, and her legacy will not be tied to this little hiccup.”
Trump’s not the only President to have found a portrait unflattering. Theodore Roosevelt loathed his White House portrait by French artist Theobald Chartran in 1902, saying it made him look like a “mewing cat.” He hid the work in his closet and ultimately had it destroyed and replaced with a different artist’s. Whether Trump’s removed portrait in Colorado faces a similar fate is unclear. There is, however, one portrait commissioned elsewhere that Trump is reportedly much more fond of: U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told conservative media commentator Tucker Carlson on Friday that Trump “was clearly touched” after Putin recently gave Witkoff a “beautiful” portrait of the U.S. President that the Russian President had commissioned a leading Russian artist to paint.