Painter-in-Chief: How Dwight Eisenhower Took Up Painting, and Why He Kept At It

Dwight Eisenhower was an officer, a general, a university president, a candidate and President of the United States — and a grandfather, father, husband, son and brother who loved sports, reading and his many hobbies. He was also a painter, one of several presidents to paint while in office, turning to canvas and brush when he wanted to relax or focus his mind.

President Eisenhower at his easel, painting two of his grandchildren. Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Churchill's example

"Ike" didn't start until he was nearly 60. During World War II he worked closely with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a devoted painter who took it up in 1915, when his career was at a low point after the failed Gallipoli Campaign he had helped plan. Painting gave Churchill solace and escape; he later built a studio at his home, Chartwell, and made over 500 paintings.

In his essay "Painting as a Pastime," Churchill called painting "great fun" but also a real intellectual exercise — "like trying to fight a battle," needing purpose and a view of the whole and every part at once. Eisenhower sometimes saw him at the easel during the war, and Churchill urged him to take up a hobby, believing that people carrying exceptional responsibilities for long periods need one. Ike saw other leaders do the same: President Roosevelt was a keen stamp collector in the White House.

The first canvas, 1948

After the war, Eisenhower was Army Chief of Staff, a stressful, high-profile post. In 1948 he left the Army to become president of Columbia University — and that year, with decades of stress behind him, a demanding schedule, and Churchill's advice in mind, he started to paint.

The last push came from Thomas Stephens, a Welsh-born portrait painter who came to the United States in the 1920s and painted George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur and Churchill (the last at Eisenhower's request). His work hangs in the White House, the National Gallery of Art, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, West Point and Annapolis, and — several pieces — in the Eisenhower home at Eisenhower National Historic Site.

In 1948 Stephens came to the Eisenhowers' home at 60 Morningside Drive, New York, to paint Mamie Eisenhower. When he and Mamie left the room to find a place to hang it, Ike — with his aide, Sergeant John Moaney — rigged up a blank canvas, took Stephens's paints, and started his own version of the portrait. Stephens and Mamie came back amused and intrigued, and everyone laughed, Ike included — but Stephens told him, seriously, that he should take up painting, and a few days later sent him a paint set.

Ike found it invigorating, relaxing and enjoyable. Unlike golf, a mistake on the canvas didn't make him angry, and painting was a quiet rainy-day pursuit he could do at home.

NATO, the campaign and the White House

• 1951: he left Columbia to become Supreme Commander of NATO forces, living in Paris with Mamie and painting amid Europe's great art — including a portrait of Bernard Montgomery, the British representative to NATO and his former subordinate in the war.
• 1952: back home to run for president, he had little time to paint — though on November 4, election day, he painted at his New York home.
• In the White House: a studio on the second floor, kept strictly private. He wanted the freedom to make mistakes out of public view; unlike golf, painting needed no driver, car, security or press. It was one of the few things he could still do as a private citizen would.

Carrying the Cold War and the country's peace and prosperity, he needed to relax his mind. Painting was not a philosophy or a commentary for him — he told a reporter in 1967 that it was simply the best way in the world to relax: part of the mind goes onto the canvas while the rest keeps making decisions.

Gettysburg

In retirement at Gettysburg, his favorite place to paint was the sun porch, with natural light and a view toward the battlefield — the simple, cozy home he and Mamie had dreamed of through decades of moving from post to post.

Pat Nixon, wife of his Vice President Richard Nixon, felt his paintings revealed the range and depth of his personality — his love of nature, his quiet religious faith, and his response to the beauty and mystery of life — adding a human legacy to his public one.

His private life shaped his public one: family strengthened him, reading informed his decisions, golf kept him active — and painting helped him handle stress, clear his mind and be a better version of himself, whether it felt like fighting a battle or simply relaxing.

Sources

Based on "Painter-in-Chief: Dwight Eisenhower's Love of Painting," National Park Service, Eisenhower National Historic Site; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Eisenhower's 1967 remark and the words of Thomas Stephens and Pat Nixon are rewritten in hubnx's own words; Churchill's are quoted from his essay. One of Eisenhower's own landscape paintings, reproduced on the source page, is not shown here.