Official National Gallery Painter Says He Put Blue Dress in ‘Famous Liar’ Bill Clinton’s Portrait

Nelson Shanks, the artist who painted the Bill Clinton portrait hanging in the National Gallery in Washington D.C., recently slammed the president as “the most famous liar” in history and said that he incorporated the famed “blue dress” into the portrait to criticize Clinton.

Shanks insisted that the Clintons have tried to get the gallery to remove his Bill Clinton painting unveiled in 2006. “The Clintons hate the portrait,” he said.

He also noted that he put an allusion to Monica Lewinski’s famous, seamen-stained blue dress.

Q: Who did you find was the hardest to capture?

Nelson 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.]

No wonder the Clintons hate it. It has the spark of truth in it. Truth is like a crucifix to a vampire for the Clintons.

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston and follow him on Twitter, on Google Plus , and Facebook.

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