A Methodist Horse Thief

Here is the president's favorite painting.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2250558,00.html






Bush has a great passion for a 1916 cowboy scene by WHD Koerner that hangs in his office. He told staff that the painting was called A Charge To Keep, a quote from his favourite Methodist hymn by Charles Wesley. He urged them to absorb the moral lesson of this "beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us," he said. But the picture originally portrayed a bad man, not a good man. It was first used in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916 to illustrate a story about a horse thief, and was captioned as a picture of his flight from the law.