Chas Fagan has created artwork for every C-SPAN history series since 1997's
Traveling Tocqueville's America. This unique oil portrait was commissioned by
C-SPAN and painted by Mr. Fagan in honor of our new series, First Ladies:
Influence and Image. The portrait presents four of our most notable first
ladies, beginning with our earliest first lady, Martha Washington, and also includes
Jacqueline Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, and our current First Lady Michelle Obama.
About the Artist:
A graduate of Yale University, Chas Fagan has gained national prominence and
recognition as an accomplished and gifted portraitist, sculptor, and painter. In his
landscape and still life paintings Fagan creates classic, yet energetic
compositions, often juxtaposing delicate details with bold brushwork.
Since 2001, Fagan has received several commissions for statues
designed specifically for the National Cathedral, in Washington D.C., as well as
commissions for the U.S.S. Reagan, the city of Houston's Bush Monument, and Purdue
University's engineering building named in honor of Neil Armstrong. In 2009, Fagan
completed a bronze sculpture of President Ronald Reagan, which stands in the Rotunda
of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. Other high-profile commissions
include the official White House Portrait of First Lady Barbara Bush, unveiled in
January 2005, and the portrait of Speaker Thomas Foley, which hangs in the
Capitol.
Recent portraits include Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Norman Borlaug,
Secretary Don Evans, and former U.S. Attorney General and Pennsylvania Governor Dick
Thornburgh. In the weeks prior to Inauguration Day 2009, Fagan created a new
painting for his complete set of oil portraits of all the presidents which now tours
the country with C-SPAN's exhibit, American Presidents: Life Portraits.