Portraits of Andrew Jackson

This is a list of portraits of Andrew Jackson, who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. All surviving images of Andrew Jackson were created after the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Born with hair variously described as reddish or sandy, Jackson was 47 years old, middle-aged and with fully "iron-gray" hair, when he came to national renown.

Historians believe that Jackson sat for about 35 portraits, and that there are a total of about 200 paintings of Jackson done in oils or watercolor, many created posthumously and/or copied from existing images. His nephew-in-law Ralph Earl was considered the "court painter" of the Andrew Jackson administration, producing "numerous paintings of Jackson, some of distinction, but many repetitious in nature and mediocre in quality, which were political icons rather than art." John James Audubon, who lived in the lower Mississippi River valley in the early 1820s, saw one Earl portrait of Jackson that had been purchased by the city of New Orleans, about which he wrote in his journal, "Great God forgive Me if my judgment is Erroneous, I Never Saw A Worse painted Sign in the streets of Paris." On the other side of the coin, Jacksonians held "the firm opinion that Earl's canvasses reflect the true likeness and character of the General better than his more celebrated contemporaries. After all, they reason, Earl had the advantage of many years of intimate daily association with his subject."

Jackson also sat for photographers in the 1840s, resulting in four surviving daguerreotypes of him in old age, when he was constantly ill and toothless (physically if not behaviorally). The portrait on the US$20 bill created by the U.S. Treasury department's Bureau of Engraving and Printing in the 1920s is based on Thomas Sully's posthumous paintings of Jackson based on earlier sketches drawn from life, such as the 1845 portrait now housed in the National Gallery of Art. Sully depicted Jackson with somewhat wavy hair, but Jackson's hair was usually described as "stiff and wiry" or "bristling."

Biographer Andrew Burstein divided the portraits of Jackson into three general categories of depiction: gentleman, enigma, and hero, creating a confusion such that "Jackson's elusiveness to the modern mind is well-symbolized" by the variation. Another writer commented: "after viewing this extensive Jacksonian gallery, one is prompted to exclaim: 'Will the real Andrew Jackson please stand up!'"

Color key:    Pre- and post-presidential portraits      Presidential-era portraits