Green Room Makeover Incorporates a Colorful Past

The renovation included a new plush rug, reproduced from a French Savonnerie floor covering made from an early-19th-century design. It has a green field punctuated by coral, green, blue, red and ecru. It gives the room a contemporary note.

Though it was created 60 years ago, the Lawrence painting is one of the room's most modern elements.

It was purchased for $2.5 million at a Christie's auction in May by the White House Acquisition Trust, a privately funded branch of the mansion's historical association. Mrs. Bush had wanted a Lawrence work since a personal friend lent her Lawrence's "To the Defense." It hangs in the Bushes' private dining room. "And because it's on the wall that I look at from my chair in the dining room, I just grew to like Jacob Lawrence more and more," she said.

Helen Cooper, a member of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, learned about the auction, saw the painting and recommended the purchase. "So we were so thrilled and I wanted it in a room that the tours really see," she said.

In the Green Room, the painting joins "The Circus No. 1" by John Marin; a portrait of Louisa Catherine Adams by Gilbert Stuart; "The Mosquito Net" by John Singer Sargent; and "Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City" by Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Lawrence, who died in 2000, has long been a Washington favorite. Phillips Collection founder Duncan Phillips bought part of his landmark series "The Migration of the Negro" in 1942.

The recent purchase and its placement stands out for many reasons. It has a worn wood frame that contrasts with the gilded ones of many of the paintings in the public rooms. The dominant colors are tan, red, beige, black and blue (there's little green). There are few features in the faces, separating it from the formal portraits. And the people in Lawrence's painting are African American.

It shows a group of muscular men, some with jaunty hats, climbing ladders, carrying beams and preparing to hammer.

Mrs. Bush said she found inspiration in the sober work. Her father was a builder in Midland, Tex., and "I guess I had sort of an unconscious connection to it, that made me like it -- the strength of the people, the angles, for instance, of the people working. It reminded me of him and the houses he built."