John F. Kennedy
When de Kooning traveled to West Palm Beach, Florida, to paint Kennedy's portrait, she commented that the president was difficult to sketch due to his "extreme restlessness..he read papers, talked on the phone, jotted down notes, crossed and uncrossed his legs, shifted from one arm of the chair to the other.." Upon returning to New York City, de Kooning worked tirelessly for nearly a year, sketching and re-sketching Kennedy based on her original renderings, as well as from hundreds of newspaper clippings and other images. Evidently awed by the task at hand, de Kooning's final product is a lean, vertical portrait with traditional dimensions, her gestural rhythms evoking the restlessness of her subject.
