Chester Alan Arthur

Daniel Huntington's 1885 portrait of Chester Alan Arthur depicts the 21st President of the United States, who had left office in March 1885 following the election of Grover Cleveland. Arthur, who had succeeded to the presidency after Garfield's assassination in 1881, served a dignified and reformist single term before declining to seek election in his own right. Huntington, one of the most prominent American portrait painters of the mid-to-late nineteenth century who served as president of the National Academy of Design, was the appropriate choice for a presidential portrait commission. Arthur died in November 1886, making this one of his last portraits.

Huntington's portrait of Arthur follows the conventions of American presidential portraiture: formal dress, controlled pose, dignified expression, neutral background. The former president's distinctive appearance — the side-whiskers that were his most recognized physical feature — is carefully rendered. Huntington's academic technique achieves convincing likeness within the formal conventions of institutional portraiture. The palette is warm and controlled, appropriate to official portraiture's requirements of permanence and dignity.