The Michigan Capitol Portrait Everyone Hates

Lansing — The man behind one of the longest-running arguments at the State Capitol is none other than John Swainson, Michigan’s 42nd governor.

The Democrat, World War II veteran, and former state senator served as governor from 1961 to 1962. And yet, in just two years in office, he earned a place among Michigan’s most controversial governors of all time.

He lived a fascinating life, and even today, more than 30 years after his death, he’s still provoking arguments at the Capitol.

Not because of anything he did—all because of a bad painting.

There are countless beautiful paintings in the Michigan State Capitol, including dozens of portraits of our former governors. The most recent ones line the rotunda, and older ones hang elsewhere in the building.

John Swainson’s portrait hangs on the second floor of the rotunda, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. It has this odd, unfinished look, like the artist got up and left halfway through working on it or like it got damaged in a house fire.

Well, believe it or not, it’s actually supposed to look like that. And funny enough, it says a lot about Swainson’s time as governor.

John Burley Swainson was born in Windsor, Ontario, and moved to Port Huron with his family when he was 2. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and lost both legs below the knees in a land mine explosion. His injuries earned him a Purple Heart.

After the war, he was fitted with prosthetic legs and learned to walk unassisted. He then attended Olivet College, where he met his wife, Alice.

In 1954 at just 29 years old, he was elected to the Michigan Senate as a Democrat. After four years in the chamber, he became lieutenant governor under Gov. G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams.

When Williams decided against running again in 1960, Swainson went for the job himself. That decision rubbed some Democrats the wrong way. They thought he was too young.

He managed to win by less than two percentage points in the same election that sent John F. Kennedy to the White House. When he took office, he was 35, making him the second-youngest governor in Michigan history at the time. They called him the Boy Governor.

Swainson didn’t make much of a mark as governor, and he certainly didn’t have much time to do so. Back then, governors were only elected for two-year terms. Swainson lost his bid for re-election in 1962 to Republican George Romney, so two years was all he got. His administration raised taxes on beer, liquor and cigarettes to fund educational programs, but that’s about it.

One of the perks of being governor, though, is that once your term is up, you get your portrait hung in the Capitol, and you get to pick the artist who does it. Swainson’s friends and other private donors chipped in $3,000 to pay for the painting, and he hired an artist from Grosse Pointe named Stephen Paul Davis for the job. Davis was an art teacher in Detroit with an impressionist style, and the Associated Press reported at the time that he’d studied under Pablo Picasso. He’d also painted Marilyn Monroe.

Swainson posed for Davis 10 different times. He wanted to be seated, look serious, and have the governor’s seal in the painting. But Davis had been given full creative freedom, so he painted Swainson standing up, smiling and holding a few papers.

The portrait was unveiled during a private reception for donors and friends at Lansing’s Jack Tar Hotel on Jan. 14, 1965, two years after Swainson left office. Almost immediately, people hated it. Swainson is standing in a dark suit on the Capitol’s black-and-white checkerboard floor, but almost everything else is a blur. His face is so washed out you can barely make out his features, and most of the other details are just as hard to see. It looked like Davis had forgotten to finish the painting, and people started asking when he was going to complete it.

But it turns out, that’s exactly how Davis wanted it to look. Because Swainson had only served two years as governor, Davis felt his work was still unfinished, so he made the portrait look unfinished, too.

“It took me seven or eight weeks to decide on the concept,” Davis told the Detroit Free Press. Even Swainson had asked at his final sitting if the face was finished. As Davis put it at the unveiling, “The governor isn’t finished either.”

Some of the loudest critics were Swainson’s fellow Democrats in the Legislature. They thought the washed-out, blurry look was unacceptable and that the Capitol ought to have a more dignified portrait of their former governor.

Swainson, however, was a fan of his portrait.

“I like it,” he told the Associated Press. “It even shows the way my shoe points up when I stand.”

But his approval wasn’t enough to get everyone else to leave it alone, and Democrats were determined to get this ugly monstrosity out of the Capitol.

By March 1965, three Democratic state senators had filed a bill to spend $2,500 in taxpayer money to have another artist paint a new portrait.

The bill failed to get traction and never made it to the Senate floor, but plenty of people still hated it, so five years later, they tried it again. This time, it was led by seven House Democrats who were willing to spend $15,000 in taxpayer money to get a new portrait done. That bill failed too.

That was the last official known effort to get the portrait removed, so 61 years later, it’s still sitting there looking unfinished and pissing people off.

Interesting to note: When Gretchen Whitmer’s portrait goes up, Swainson’s is next in line to move from the second floor of the rotunda to the third. He’s the earliest-serving governor still represented on the second floor.

Of course, the ugly painting isn’t the only reason people find John Swainson controversial. He actually went on to have a pretty turbulent career after he left the governor’s office.

After losing the election in 1962, he served as a Wayne County Circuit Court judge from 1965 to 1971. He was then elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1970 and took his seat in 1971.

However, his judicial career ended in scandal just four years later when he was charged with accepting a $20,000 bribe from a felon who wanted the Michigan Supreme Court to overturn his conviction. He was found not guilty of bribery, but he was found guilty of perjury and served 60 days in a halfway house. To this day, he’s the only former Michigan governor to have served time.

He redeemed himself somewhat later in life by serving as president of the Michigan Historical Commission. He joined the commission in 1985 and was still its president when he died.

He died of a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 68, but his legacy lives on at the Capitol thanks to his controversial, unfinished portrait.

To this day, people still argue about whether it’s art or trash. Personally, I kind of like it. It’s unique, and I think a portrait that looks like somebody called it quits halfway through is pretty fitting for a governor who only got two years and didn’t do a whole lot.

You can stop by the Capitol and see it for yourself before you decide.