Bush Portraits Unveiled at Smithsonian

It felt like a farewell.

First Lady Laura Bush up there on stage unveiling her portrait, and thanking the White House staff in the audience for eight years of "support and friendship." President Bush, yuk-yukking with those shoulders bobbing, saying "I suspected there would be a good-sized crowd once the word got out about my hanging."

The First Couple plans to return to Texas after completing their terms next month, and they showed off their portraits to a National Portrait Gallery audience that had a distinct, but muted Southwest vibe -- complete with the "y'alls," but without the cowboy hats. A group of donors from Oklahoma put together $160,000 for Bush's portrait, a lush image of him seated on a green sofa in a Western-style shirt. A wealthy Texas garbage-man's foundation came up with $40,000 for a sunlit scene of the First Lady reclined on her right elbow with a book propped on her lap.

The Oklahoma donors came to Washington with a sense of purpose, hoping to salute a president that the Tulsa oilman and fast-food mogul William S. Atherton says "got a bum rap."

"It seems like all of Oklahoma is here," Atherton observed before the unveiling.

Atherton kicked in $8,000 for the president's portrait, chump change for a guy like him.

"Probably the cheapest deal there ever was," Atherton said.

Atherton, who will visit the White House tomorrow with the rest of the Oklahomans, wasn't exactly blown away by what he saw hanging on the walls before the unveiling.

"That one of Clinton, I don't think is very good," Atherton said, in reference to the National Portrait Gallery's painting of former President Bill Clinton.

His distaste was bi-partisan -- he didn't think much of the Ronald Reagan portrait, either. But today's unveiling was getting raves from the Oklahomans who lingered after the ceremony to snap pictures of each other in front of the Bush portraits. Cheryl Hewett, a well-to-do pathologist's wife from Oklahoma City, narrowly averted a minor fashion disaster when she sidled up to the presidents to pose for a picture with her name tag stuck to the lapel of her St. John jacket.

Thankfully, one of her friends came running up, and called out: "Take that tag off."

The president's portrait was painted by his Yale classmate, Robert Anderson, a Darien, Conn. artist who worked from photographs to create the smiling image now on display. Bush greeted Anderson on stage with a bear hug. The First Lady was painted by Aleksander Titovets, a Russian émigré who lives in El Paso, Texas. He traveled to Washington for two sittings with Mrs. Bush at the White House. She accepted a peck on the cheek from the bushily bearded artist.

The unveilings got an A-list gloss from the presence of Vice President Dick Cheney--who slipped out before the speeches were done--and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. But really, one might be left to wonder just how "official" this gathering of official Washington was, even though the president joked that "this exhibit now has an interesting symmetry. It starts with George W. -- and ends with George W."

In a news release, the portrait gallery describes the portraits as the "official likenesses" of President and Mrs. Bush. But a White House spokesman says the paintings that got their first airing today are not the official "official portraits." Those will be completed after President Bush leaves office and will hang at the White House.