Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes Portrait

Artist: Daniel Huntington
Date of Work: 1881
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Credit: White House Collection/White House Historical Association

Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, by Daniel Huntington (1816-1809), was commissioned for the White House in 1880 by the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Lucy Webb Hayes was a popular first lady and the first with public cause, in this case abstinence from alcohol. She won the praise of the temperance advocates as well as those favoring women's rights. Mrs. Hayes sat for the portrait in the artist's studio in New York just before Christmas 1880, when the pencil-on-paper sketch was made by the artist. The completed portrait (87 1/8 x 54 3/4 in.), monumental scale, was hung in the East Room three months later.