First lady Melania Trump chose an intriguing painting for her office: a replica depicting a scene that seems to mirror her life.
In a new trailer for her self-produced documentary, Melania, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the first lady’s life, one observer spotted what appears to be a fake copy of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s 1874 painting La Loge hanging in her Trump Tower office.
“It seems that their interior designer was playing a prank on them,” art writer Julie Davich told Emily Sundberg’s Substack newsletter Feed Me.
The painting, which appears in the trailer as the first lady greets her husband with a “Hi, Mr. President” during a phone call while looking out at the New York City skyline, is a 1874 Impressionist work showing a Parisian couple in a theater box.
In 19th-Century France, the theater box symbolized wealth and social status, and the painting has also been interpreted as critiquing the entitled attitude of bourgeois men, with the man in the box appearing to scan the crowd for another woman.
According to some interpretations, Renoir’s model—Nini Lopez—seems to have an ambiguous social standing, suggested by her extravagant dress and makeup, which may symbolize her attempt to push her way into high society.
“Just swap out the name ‘Nini’ for Ivana, Marla, or Melania,” wrote Davich, author of The Appraisal newsletter, highlighting the irony of the similarities of the woman in the painting with President Donald Trump’s current and former wives, whose social status and wealth rose significantly after marrying the businessman.
Yet the parallels don’t end with the subject of Renoir’s artwork: the painting itself is a reproduction, the original is displayed at The Courtauld Gallery in London, and a smaller version was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in London in 2008.
According to journalist Mark Bowden, Trump had spoken about owning Renoir paintings as far back as 1996.
In a piece for Vanity Fair, Bowden described how, during a meeting that year, the president—then a businessman—showed off his private jet and pointed out a Renoir on his walls, claiming it was worth “$10 million.” However, Davich notes in her newsletter that around the same time, Renoir’s small Baigneuse painting sold for $20.9 million.
“He showed off the gilded interior of his plane—calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see... what?” Bowden recalled, remembering that Trump made him lean in to see not the brush strokes on the painting, but the signature.
The president is known for his tacky, gold-loving style, once posting on Twitter that “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
Since the start of his administration, Trump has demolished the East Wing to make room for a gaudy ballroom expected to be larger than the White House, criticized other presidents’ décor for having cheap taste, and redesigned the Rose Garden, leaving his mark on the White House in his own style.
Yet, when it comes to art, he was once described by Pop Art artist Andy Warhol as “sort of cheap,” after he rejected and never bought Warhol’s portraits of the Trump Tower in the 1980s.
“When it comes to investing, he prefers higher-return investments,” a longtime friend of Trump told Page Six, adding, “Trump can appreciate great art, but he finds the New York arts crowd elitist and phony. He prefers real estate.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment regarding Renoir’s painting being in the first lady’s office.
