A 143-Year-Old Portrait Fuels a US Government Turf War

Yet here in America’s hidebound capital, where power sometimes takes the shape of a rectangular gilded frame, two federal agencies are squabbling over the 143-year-old portrait of a long-dead public servant so obscure he’s more like Who McCulloch to Americans today.

In a drawn-out turf battle—a canvas battle, actually—both claim to be the rightful owners of the only known portrait of McCulloch. The painting currently hangs in a third-floor hallway at the Treasury Department, which might seem fair enough. McCulloch was a two-time Treasury secretary.

Not fair at all, says the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an independent agency within the Treasury that occupies a separate building a mile and a half away. McCulloch was appointed during the Lincoln administration as the nation’s first comptroller of the currency, and was best known for creating a national currency that helped to bankroll the Union in the Civil War.

More than three decades ago, the OCC says, it lent the portrait to Treasury. Since then, despite the OCC’s pleas, Treasury won’t give it back. Treasury is in charge of federal borrowing, but for the OCC, this loan is long overdue.

Current acting Comptroller Michael Hsu and his staff want the painting returned, people familiar with their thinking said, although they haven’t said so publicly. Hsu, after all, is a career federal employee who got his current job thanks to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Social media and streaming content may rule supreme these days, but in Washington, portraits are still a big deal. Paintings of committee chairmen adorn congressional hearing rooms. The president gets at least two—the official portrait in the White House and another in the National Portrait Gallery.

They also can cause partisan bickering. Earlier this year, after Republicans took control of the House Ways and Means Committee, a painting of former Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) disappeared from the hearing-room walls. Others, including William McKinley (R., Ohio)—a Ways and Means guy before he won the presidency—appeared.

Democrats were concerned, said one House Democratic aide. Rangel was the committee’s first and only Black chairman. A House Republican aide said the portraits needed refurbishing and cleaning. Rangel reappeared.

“Charlie’s back where he belongs," says Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat. “All’s well that ends well."

Political portraits are “a very effective tool for conveying power," says art historian Alba Campo Rosillo. She describes the portrait of McCulloch as typical of the dark palette used in the late 19th century, “where the sobriety of the chromatic choices spoke to the moral rectitude of the sitter."

Unfortunately for the OCC, there’s apparently only one original portrait of McCulloch. It was painted by George Peter Alexander Healy, a famous 19th century portraitist. His 1868 painting called “The Peacemakers"—of Lincoln and the Union high command—still hangs in the White House.

The wall of the comptroller’s office is adorned with paintings of recent comptrollers, but the one of the nation’s first is just a copy. Former comptrollers and their staffers say they lent the original of McCulloch to Treasury before the department’s bicentennial in the late 1980s, and that when the Treasury staff turned over between the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, the department reneged on a promise to return it.

“Sure, we’ll bring it back when the celebration is over," Bob Clarke, comptroller during those two administrations, recalls being told by a former top Treasury official. “I made a terrible mistake, of course, by not getting it in writing."

Former Comptroller Clarke and his successors through different administrations have attempted to get the painting returned. Their entreaties were ignored or met with evasive responses, said Jesse Stiller, a former historian for the OCC.

In 1999, Comptroller of the Currency Jerry Hawke pressed Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to return McCulloch. The portrait, he wrote in a letter, had been a part of the OCC since it was unveiled in 1881, and when the OCC moved out of the Treasury building to L’Enfant Plaza in 1974, “the portrait moved with the agency."

A few weeks later, an assistant to Rubin responded that the department had paid $500 for the McCulloch portrait in 1881, so it was rightfully theirs. (Today, comptrollers’ portraits cost much more—typically between $30,000 and $40,000. They are paid for after a comptroller leaves office by the American Bankers Association, an industry group.)

Former OCC officials say who paid for it is irrelevant because, at the time, Treasury paid for all of the comptroller’s nonexamination expenses.

Treasury had no intention of breaking up its collection of “fine and decorative arts," the department’s then chief financial officer, Nancy Killefer, wrote to Hawke, because it was small and needed to be shared among “a large number of executive offices and members of the public who tour the building."

Former Comptroller Hawke, who died last year, was still bristling about McCulloch at the unveiling of his own portrait in 2006. “The next time they have a fire at the Treasury, you ought to send a team in" to grab back the old painting, he joked at an unveiling ceremony, according to the American Banker publication.

About a decade ago, the staff for Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry asked to display the McCulloch painting during the OCC’s 150th anniversary. Treasury officials again said they had no plans to break up their complete collection of Treasury secretary portraits, and they also reminded the OCC staff that they were just a bureau of the Treasury, according to former regulatory officials.

Joseph Otting, the last Senate-confirmed comptroller of the currency, joked with his staff that the original portrait was rightfully theirs, and “we should go get it," according to former aides. Senior OCC officials, when visiting the Treasury for meetings, also joked about running off with the original.

But Treasury’s views about the painting haven’t changed, an agency official said. So for now, Treasury is still the controller of the comptroller’s portrait.