A Closer Look at the Posthumous JFK Portrait Seen in 'Love Story'

"The only stipulation she made was, 'I don't want him to look the way everybody else makes him look, with the bags under his eyes and that penetrating gaze. I'm tired of that image.' Shikler studied photographs to create a presidential portrait that honored Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's vision of how her late husband should be remembered and represented in the White House collection."

The Kennedy family remains central to American cultural imagination, recently featured in FX's Love Story series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. The show incorporates fine art, notably Aaron Shikler's official posthumous presidential portrait of JFK in a scene depicting Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Following JFK's 1963 assassination, Onassis shaped her husband's legacy by commissioning Shikler to paint an unconventional presidential portrait. Onassis specifically requested that the portrait avoid the typical depiction of tired eyes and penetrating gaze seen in other presidential portraits, seeking a different representation of her late husband.

Read at Artnet News