Richard Achilles Ballinger

Richard Ballinger (1858–1922) was a respected lawyer specializing in public land use. He also served as a superior judge and mayor of Seattle. At the request of his former college classmate, Interior Secretary James R. Garfield, Ballinger came to the nation's capital for a brief term as commissioner of the General Land Office under President Roosevelt. With the next presidential election—despite promises to retain the members of Roosevelt’s Cabinet—President Taft made Ballinger his secretary of the Interior. He immediately restored 3 million acres of land to private hands, angering conservationists who regarded these actions as a reversal of Roosevelt's agenda. Ballinger was further beset by allegations of political impropriety from Gifford Pinchot, who had been a close Roosevelt ally. When Roosevelt transferred responsibility for forest reserves out of the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture’s newly-created U.S. Forest Service in 1905, Pinchot was named its first chief. Purportedly in defense of Roosevelt’s conservationist legacy, Pinchot levied criticism and investigations against Ballinger that played out very publicly. Although President Taft supported Ballinger and fired Pinchot, the “Ballinger-Pinchot Affair” caused a rift between Taft and Roosevelt and ultimately split the Republican Party. Ballinger was exonerated from any wrongdoing, but he resigned in 1911 so as not to be a further distraction. He resumed practicing law.

In 1909, internationally renowned British portraitist Ernest Moore (1865–1940) spent 10 months in Washington, D.C. and Kentucky working on several commissions, one of which was this painting.