PA Artist Painted Monica Lewinsky Reference in Bill Clinton Portrait

Bill Clinton portrait hanging at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. | Size-altered photo from Hrag Vartanian on Flickr

Philly-area painter Nelson Shanks has said yes to the dress. News is getting out that, in a 2006 portrait of former President Bill Clinton, the painter included a reference to Monica Lewinsky’s famed Gap dress that made headlines in the ’90s for its unfortunate stain.

“If you look at the left-hand side of it, there’s a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things,” the painter told the Daily News. “It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.”

The painting now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in D.C., from which, he claims (and the gallery denies), the Clintons have been lobbying to have it removed. More on the story here.