From Martha Washington to Melania Trump: 250 years of first lady portraiture
Bess Truman, US first lady from 1945 until 1953, has not become the sort of historical figure people quote on Instagram. “A woman’s public role is to sit beside her husband, be silent, and be sure her hat is on straight,” she said, even though, behind the scenes, she was nicknamed “the Boss” and wrote many of President Truman’s speeches.
Martha Washington by an unidentified artist, circa 1800-1825.
Such anecdotes permeate Every Eye Is on Me, a new exhibition of first lady portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, which tracks the development of the role from the early 19th century to the present. The portraits, which range from Martha Washington’s detached stare and frilled bonnet to Melania Trump’s soft-focus smise, aim to examine “the way these women were framed”. The show is also part of an effort “to help rectify the absences of women in US history,” according to its curator, Gwendolyn
DuBois Shaw.
Louisa Adams by Charles Robert Leslie, 1816, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Boris Chaliapin, 1960-61
Ideally, we would be talking about first spouses, of course, but so far, alas, the US president has always been a man, with a first lady beside him. The position was born of what we might now describe as emotional labour, too. In the early 19th century, says DuBois Shaw, “propriety dictated that a woman be present, as a hostess, if it was a mixed gathering of people”. If no wife was available first daughters, and first female friends were roped in.
Mary Lincoln by Mathew Brady, 1861.
These early first ladies were often very ambitious. “I was struck by how many of these women were smarter than their husbands,” says DuBois Shaw, “but, because of women’s secondary position, had to attach themselves to a man who could take them where they wanted from to go.” Mary Lincoln, for example, “was very interested in politics. But she can’t run so she finds a guy who also wants to go places and tries to partner with him.” This was no easy ride, of course. Being opinionated and outspoken, says DuBois Shaw “she was constantly thwarted by sexism. She develops a reputation as being a difficult woman.”
Eleanor Roosevelt by Yousuf Karsh, 1944.
The question of whether the first lady should verbalise her opinions has reverberated through the ages. Eleanor Roosevelt, for example, had a newspaper column, a weekly radio address and published more than 40 books over her lifetime. Her portrait, in which she is theatrically lit like a screwball heroine, and symbolically holds a pencil, brings this to life. She was “an amazing writer, a woman who found her voice in middle age, and was very active, travelling places her husband couldn’t after contracting polio”, says DuBois Shaw. As a tireless social justice activist, often expressing more radical political views than her husband, her outspokenness made her a polarising figure.
If Eleanor Roosevelt represents the years, during her tenure of 1933 until 1945, when many women’s lives changed dramatically as they entered the workforce as part of the war effort, Mamie Eisenhower’s portrait expresses a thousand words about the 1950s backlash.
In a candyfloss-coloured dress with