The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston announced Monday that it has acquired a famous portrait of President John F. Kennedy.
The Kennedy family asked Jamie Wyeth to paint the portrait in 1967, after JFK was assassinated.
The then 20-year-old fledgling artist agreed to make an unofficial portrait that he would keep if the family didn’t approve of the finished work.
MFA Art of the Americas curator Elliot Bostwick Davis said the artist received mixed reviews.
“Robert Kennedy didn’t care for it — he found it was too painful a reminder of his brother,” Bostwick Davis explained, “whereas Jacqueline Kennedy felt it was a very striking and stirring likeness of her husband. As a result it remained in the artist’s own collection, and hence has come to the museum and come to the public.”