Artist Behind Reagans’ Yule Card : His Design of White House Scene Chosen for Fourth Year

The eighth and final White House Christmas card that President and Nancy Reagan will mail to 125,000 of their closest friends beginning today shows the mansion’s North Entry Hall festooned with red poinsettias and garlands of holiday greens.

Painted by Thomas William Jones of Bellevue, Wash., the scene glimpsed through decorated marble columns is of a gilded mirror, circa 1795, above a pier table that President James Monroe purchased in 1817. The poinsettias stand beneath the table.

The painting is titled “North Entry Hall at Christmas,” and the card’s greeting reads: “The President and Mrs. Reagan extend to you warm wishes that your holidays and the coming year will be filled with happiness and peace.”

It is the fourth consecutive year that a painting by Jones, 46, a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, has been chosen by the Reagans to be reproduced by Hallmark Cards Inc.

Artist Took Liberties

Jones’ previous cards featured the State Dining Room in 1987, the East Room in 1986 and the Blue Room in 1985, all scenes Nancy Reagan expressly asked to be represented.

White House Christmas decorations went up last weekend.

Jones explained that he “took liberties by sort of doing my own decorations, because I felt that scene is pretty much the same every year, with garlands on the marble columns and evergreens on the table.”

He actually painted the entry hall scene in 1986, at the same time he painted the 1987 State Dining Room scene.

The mirror and table are to the west of the Blue Room entrance. Between two of the marble columns in the painting there is a suggestion of a President’s portrait in a gilded frame. Jones said he decided it would not be “appropriate” to single out any particular President’s portrait, though in reality the portrait there is of Gerald Ford.

Jones came to the attention of Mrs. Reagan and her staff through Lloyd Taggart, who represented Jones’s work at various times and was a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Since then Jones has submitted two studies of selected interior scenes each year so the Reagans have a choice.

Original Watercolor

This year, holiday visitors will view Jones’s original watercolor as they enter the East Wing corridor. His signature, in the bottom right-hand corner, is barely discernible, but he said that was by intention.

“I always sign my name small, but this time I thought my name was not really that important, so instead of ‘Thomas William Jones,’ I signed it ‘T. W. Jones.’ I do get (printed) credit on the card,” he said.

He also said “just the honor of being asked” is payment enough, and that the artist does not receive a fee, though he is permitted to keep the watercolor. Jones has sold two and kept one.

Mailing Costs

Hallmark prints the cards at cost, and the Republican National Committee pays printing and mailing costs.

The 25-cent stamp affixed to the envelope will be a reproduction of Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli’s “Madonna and Child.”

Hallmark created the first presidential Christmas card at the request of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Each of his successors has continued the tradition.