Nelson Shanks, who Captured the Likes of Clinton and Diana is Dead

He was back in focus earlier this year when he said that his Bill Clinton portrait had a reference to Monica Lewinsky

Nelson Shanks, a painter renowned for his portraits of prominent figures ranging from presidents to a pope to royalty, has died. He was 77.

Shanks died on Friday at his home in Andsalusia, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, according to Bill Wedo, spokesman for the Studio Incamminati art school that Shanks founded with his wife, Leona.

Shanks painted well-known subjects such as Princess Diana, Pope John Paul II, presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and a group portrait of the first four women to serve on the US Supreme Court.

He was called “the most talented contemporary traditional portraitist” by D Dodge Thompson, chief of exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

The artist and his Clinton portrait made waves earlier this year when he told the Philadelphia Daily News that he included a subtle reference to White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the work. He said a shadow beside Clinton is a literal reference to Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress and a symbolic nod to the shadow the affair cast on his presidency.

Although he taught at several art institutes, Shanks launched the Studio Incamminati, School for Contemporary Realist Art in Center City Philadelphia in 2002 to teach figure-painting and other realist techniques.

“There’s a lot of nonsense and charlatanism out there, the vast percentage of it. I think history will prove it’s of no interest,” Shanks said at his studio, a converted carriage house on his property.

He counted Princess Diana as one of his “dear friends,” he told The Associated Press after her death in 1997. When asked to paint her portrait three years earlier, he was in the process of painting Britain’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which he said “made for an interesting juxtaposition of images.”

Shanks is survived by his wife, daughters Renee Hofferman, Jennifer Shanks and Annalisa Shanks, and son Alexander Shanks, a student at the school. A memorial service is planned in the coming weeks, Wedo said.

Shanks told the Daily News in March that he believed portraiture’s role in the age of the selfie was “to stop and smell the roses.”