William McKinley

Born Niles, Ohio

Many of the artists of the miniature revival at the turn of the century were women. Emily Drayton Taylor had studied painting in Paris and in Philadelphia before she began her career as a miniaturist in the early 1890s, after having three children. She was a great promoter of the art, and through her growing reputation, she was invited to Washington to make a pair of miniature portraits of President and Mrs. McKinley in the spring of 1899. This portrait, a slightly larger version of the likeness at the White House, descended in the artist�s family.