President Trump added a statue of Thomas Jefferson to his Rose Garden display of sculptures last week, a benefactor of the artwork said on Monday.
The life-size bronze statue, sculpted by George Lundeen, depicts the nation’s third president seated with a quill and a draft of the Declaration of Independence.
“You’re honored as an American to have anything like that to share with the American people,” said Mr. Lundeen, who added that Mr. Trump had left him a personal voice mail message.
“The sculpture looks really beautiful,” Mr. Trump said in the message, which Mr. Lundeen shared with The New York Times. “We have a wonderful place right in the Rose Garden.”
The sculptor said that while Jefferson was a complicated figure, he was worth honoring.
“Of course I know that through the years, President Jefferson has had his ups and downs,” he said. “But without the man, I don’t know if we’d have an America.”
Bringing the sculpture to the White House was the idea of Steven C. Barber, a filmmaker, who paid to send Jefferson to the nation’s capital in the same month as America’s 250th birthday. “That’s as good as it gets,” Mr. Barber said.
Mr. Trump has spearheaded several projects in honor of the semiquincentennial, including plans for a sculpture garden known as the National Garden of American Heroes and a 250-foot triumphal arch.
Mr. Lundeen has also sculpted Mr. Trump, with one hand holding a MAGA hat and the other raised in a fist, a reference to his gesture after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. That statue — a collaboration with Joey Bainer and the sculptor’s brother Mark Lundeen — resides at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.
The Jefferson statue, which was earlier reported by The New York Post, is the fifth that Mr. Trump has had installed in the Rose Garden, joining ones of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, along with a sculpture called “Freedom’s Charge” honoring Revolutionary War soldiers.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that the Franklin, Hamilton and “Freedom’s Charge” sculptures were on loan from Harlan Crow, a conservative art collector and political donor who had previously had them installed on his corporate campus in Dallas. Mr. Crow did not respond to requests for comment.
In March, a statue of Christopher Columbus was installed in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which houses offices for White House staff and is next to the West Wing.
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