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Bill Clinton Portrait Contains Lewinsky Clue

Bill Clinton Portrait Contains Lewinsky Clue

An artist who painted a portrait of Bill Clinton has revealed the work contains a secret reference to the former US President's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

In an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News, Nelson Shanks revealed the shadow on the left side of the portrait was cast by a mannequin in a blue dress.

This was an allusion to Mr Clinton's relationship with the 22-year-old White House intern, he said, calling the former president "probably the most famous liar of all time".

Mr Shanks said: "If you look at the left-hand side of it there's a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things.

"It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there.

"It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him."

He said the Clintons "hate" the portrait and want the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC to give it the brush off.

After the scandal broke in January 1998, Mr Clinton famously stated during a nationally televised White House news conference: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

But he was forced to come clean as the evidence mounted against him, including a sample of his DNA left on her blue dress.