Frances Cleveland 1864–1947

Born Buffalo, New York First Lady 1886–1889; 1893–1897

Frank (later “Frances”) Clara Folsom was nine years old when her father died and his law partner, Grover Cleveland, became executor of his friend’s vast estate. After she reached maturity, the two became romantically involved. At twenty-one, Frances Folsom became the youngest first lady when she married President Cleveland, who was almost three decades her senior. And when her husband was re-elected to an unprecedented second, non-consecutive, term in 1892, she became the only woman to be first lady twice.

This elegant portrait of Frances Cleveland by Swedish artist Anders Zorn acts as a companion to Zorn’s likeness of Grover Cleveland, which hangs nearby in the America’s Presidents galleries. The painting shows the former first lady at age thirty-five, at the couple’s home in Princeton, New Jersey. She wears one of her signature looks: a lace-ruffled gown revealing her bare shoulders and arms.

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Frances Payne