Sargent arrived in the United States in January 1903 and came to live in the White House the following month. At first, the personalities of the two men made progress difficult. Sargent was especially picky about the location where he would ask the president to pose, and Roosevelt was notoriously prickly and impatient with directives. According to one account the president was leading the artist upstairs when the two got into an argument. Roosevelt accused Sargent of not knowing what he wanted, and the artist retorted that the president did not know how to pose. Furious, Roosevelt turned around, grabbed the newel-post with his right hand and yelled “Don’t I!”—at which Sargent told him to hold his pose right there. Sargent completed his portrait on February 19 after several sessions. The president’s refusal to pose for more than half an hour at a time annoyed the painter, but Roosevelt was delighted with the results, professing to “like his picture enormously.”³

After being privately exhibited in a local gallery, the portrait was hung in the White House Entrance Hall at the beginning of April 1903, as Roosevelt’s official portrait. A critic wrote that “Mr. Sargent has portrayed more than the outer man. . . . He has pictured with the President’s features his energy, his alertness, his aggressiveness and his unyielding disposition, but he has left out the kindliness and geniality which have won for Mr. Roosevelt the regard of his subordinates and the affection of his friends.”⁴

The other Sargent painting arrived at the White House in November 1964 as a gift from Whitney Warren of San Francisco in memory of late President John F. Kennedy. It is titled “The Mosquito Net,” and was likely painted by Sargent in 1912 at Abriès in the French Alps. Its subject was Polly Barnard, who was the daughter of one of the artist’s friends; and the painting was one of the few that Sargent maintained in his personal collection until his death in 1925.⁵

In the days before effective mosquito repellent, other forms of protection were necessary. This was true especially in the summertime, and even in the Alpine regions of Europe. The subject, then, reclines on a voluminous bed, having abandoned her reading and looking pensively through the netting that covers the upper half of her body. The painting was first hung in the Second Floor oval room of the White House. At first glance, visitors often mistake it for a painting of a woman on her death bed; but the painting’s light-hearted tone becomes apparent after careful study.