As America continues to celebrate its 250th year, the art of the White House Collection offers its own picture of our evolving nation. It began with just a single presidential portrait but has expanded over time, shaped by presidents, first ladies and eventually professional curators.

The collection of more than 500 paintings, drawings and sculptures captures the nation’s leaders and landscapes, wars and peace, and an evolving sense of whose art and experiences belong in the American story. 

"Art for the White House: A Changing Portrait of America," a new book by Leslie Greene Bowman, traces how those works came to be part of the White House Collection and what those choices reveal about the country at different moments in our history. It also tells the more personal story of how presidents and first families lived with art, loved particular works and helped assemble the collection over generations.

It all begins with a familiar face.

How artwork became a staple of White House decor

A full-length portrait of President George Washington, painted by Gilbert Stuart, was the first piece acquired for the White House. Congress purchased it as John and Abigail Adams became the mansion’s first residents in November 1800.

For decades, presidents themselves were largely the story reflected on the White House walls. As late as 1860, the collection contained just 12 works of art, nine of them presidential portraits.

One of the first to push for a new tradition was former first lady Julia Gardiner Tyler, who presented her own 1848 portrait in 1869, hoping it would inspire a collection that included the mansion’s male residents as well as their wives.

The idea didn’t catch on immediately, but first lady Edith Roosevelt established the........

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