“Flag” painting in WH Oval Office chosen by Clinton, Obama & Biden for display - symbol of Salem Witch Trials, WWI and Crash of 1929.
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/treasures-of-the-white-house-avenue-in-the-rain
“Avenue in the Rain”
Signed Childe Hassam in February 1917
Gift of TM Evans 1963 to White House
The Flag painting depicts the promotion of the USA entering World War One /WWI during fund raising parades along 5th Avenue in NYC. It was placed initially in the assassinated President Lincoln blue bedroom, adjacent west to the yellow oval salon in the year that JFK was assassinated. It was painted by a descendent of a Salem Witch trial judge (1699) and donated by a corporate raider (Mellon-Evans) who descended from one of the architects of the Crash of 1929 and of the Income Tax system.
Wikipedia:
“It was donated to the White House in 1963 by Thomas Mellon Evans and hung between the windows in John F. Kennedy's blue-themed President's Bedroom (now a private sitting room, adjacent to the Yellow Oval Room on the second floor), and then in the President's Dining Room for many years. It hung in the Oval Office during Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump’s terms, as well as currently under Joe Biden's term.”
Painter Childe Hassam (English from Horsham) was born 1859 in Boston. His mother descended from the Nathaniel Hawthorne family, author best known for “The Scarlett Letter” and “House of Seven Gables”. Hassam also descended from John Hathorne one of the chief judges condemning innocent women in the Salem witch trials.
The “Avenue in the Rain” flag series was part of a promotional campaign of NYC parades to raise funds for the USA entering WW1.
The painting donator, Thomas Mellon Evans's (1910-1997) great-grandmother Elinor was the sister of Thomas Mellon, the father of the wealthy financier and banker, Andrew W. Mellon.[3] uS Treasurer 1921 to 1932 presided over the Wall Street crash of 1929. Mellon owned among others, Westinghouse Electric and Gulf Oil. Mellon was also involved in the creation of the current income tax system. In 1933 he was investigated for tax fraud.
For a few years after finishing Yale university, Thomas Evans held a clerical job at Gulf Oil, owned at the time by the Mellon family. Ambitious, he saved as much money as he could from his salary and together with a small inheritance, set out on his own. In 1939, he was able to purchase the bankrupt H.K. Porter, Inc., a manufacturer of light-duty railroad locomotives that he would diversify into the steel, hardware, and construction material business before converting the company into a holding corporation that would, during Evans time, take over more than eighty United States companies.
Link:
https://old.post-gazette.com/books/reviews/20000723review530.asp