Bill Clinton looking up at his portrait during its unveiling at the Smithsonian Castle Building in Washington. Photograph: Haraz N Ghanbari/AP

Bill Clinton portrait artist hints at Monica Lewinsky scandal

Nelson Shanks: ‘I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting’

Alan Yuhas in Washington
Tuesday 3 March 2015 00.37 GMT

The artist responsible for a portrait of Bill Clinton in Washington’s National Portrait Gallery says he painted a hint of the Monica Lewinsky scandal on the canvas.

Nelson Shanks, of south-east Pennsylvania, told the Philadelphia Daily News that while painting a portrait of the former president, “I could never get this Monica thing” – meaning the president’s sexual tryst with a White House intern and subsequent lies about the liaison – “completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting”.