Talk:Martin Van Buren

Discussion after RfC

At some point soon this should be presented again, but with just two choices: A and E. E was added late as a crop of D, which came close to being chosen, and arguably presents a better image than D from which it is cropped. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:50, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

poor guy never got a reply Gabrielgames123 (talk) 06:29, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

PAINTING

Should we make the portrait of Martin Van Buren a painting, like what we once did with John Tyler? 147.219.50.230 (talk) 22:32, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

There were substantial discussions at #Infobox portrait and #Rfc for Martin Van Buren's Lede Image. This does not mean that the choice of image is forever frozen, but if you want to change it and you want your change to "stick", you will have to somehow deal with those discussions. Bruce leverett (talk) 12:31, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Page is self-contradictory

It seems like the page contradicts itself in stating He was also the first U.S. president who was not born a British subject but also having the infobox say Born: Maarten Van Buren December 5, 1782 Kinderhook, Province of New York, British America. I know that he was born right in a period of flux during American Independence, but I am not sure the best way to handle this. Casablanca 🪨^(T) 13:34, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Fixed.Billmckern (talk) 20:54, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Good observation.

His birth in that period of flux is notable and worth developing (within reason) Cognator15 (talk) 22:45, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Nationalities at Birth

It is quite common for people born in/ connected with a disputed (or formerly disputed) territory to hold multiple nationalities. It's not a question of choice or self identification it's a matter of legal status that the relevant governments confer. Similar more contemporary examples, include Emilo Palma who was born in the Argentine and British Antarctic Claim at time when both states has Jus Soli Citizenship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Palma), and also people connected with the Crimea or Donbass now are in a similar situation. Van Buren's situation was analogous, he was born in both "The State of New York, USA" and "The Province of New York, British Empire" both were legal and political realities at that moment. So he was clearly a dual national at the time of his birth, (and likely for the rest of his life even if he didn't know it). By and large British Nationality was acquired automatically, then as now. Essentially the sources cited stating Van Buren was not a "British Subject" at birth appear to be knowledgeable about US political history but not how British Nationality works/ worked at the time and have made some incorrect assumptions. So on that specific point they are not reliable sources. They may be reliable on other point but not British nationality laws of the late 18th century, so will amend. Is Van Buren's status as a dual national (at least at birth) the most interesting thing about him? No, but it is notable that he was the first President born after 4 July 1776, and the last one born before the Peace of Paris. What those facts then mean requires an understanding of American and British nationality rules of the time. Certainly when it comes to his British Nationality status the article at present is flawed. There may need to work on his American nationality too, since he was also born prior to the American Constitution (as the idea is understood now) being adopted, but that probably would benefit from attention of someone more expert on that than this contributor. Cognator15 (talk) 21:57, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Why is Obama there

The picture of Martin Van Buren has been replaced with Obama ~2026-78658-8 (talk) 14:15, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. All of that temporary account's edits have been reverted & the IP for that account is now blocked. Peaceray (talk) 23:03, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

infobox image

Collapsing this discussion per WP:SOCKHAT as it was started by a now-blocked sockpuppet. Mz7 (talk) 06:40, 11 April 2026 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

I am closing this RfC as withdrawn because the initiator of the RfC recently tried to blank it, indicating they no longer wish to pursue this. Further discussion of the image can take place in a follow-up thread. Mz7 (talk) 06:12, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

---

Which picture should be in the lead? 15:50, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

A painting better represents him cus its from his prime (1837-1838 during his presidency),the problem i have with the photo is that its from 1855, thats like 7 years nearing his death. and dont hit me with the "people remember him that way" cus the reason why ppl remember him that way is because of this article Gabrielgames123 (talk) 05:59, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Update: I have made a fool of himself by not responding to all the messages under this thread ~2026-22185-39 (talk) 04:02, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Cullen you called? Gabrielgames123 (talk) 06:00, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

I oppose replacing an iconic, historic and outstanding photograph with a pedestrian, run-of-the-mill painting. A photograph (unless it is of terrible quality) is always preferable to a painting. This particular photo, since it is one of the earliest photos of a US president, is included in many books about the early history of photography. Before changing the photo, there needs to be clearcut consensus here on this talk page. I highly recommend that Gabrielgames123 read previous discussion of this issue and formulate a Request for comment. Cullen328 (talk) 06:07, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

The early history of photography sure but not van buren himself

I dont think martin van buren is most known for being one of the most earliest presidents to be photographed...

You should give examples of books BOTH referring to the early history of photography AND martin van buren himself, please.

whats an RfC? Gabrielgames123 (talk) 06:25, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Also you forgot to adress the problem i have its that the photo is from 1855, way after van buren's prime. Its like if we replaced herbert hoover's lead image just because color pictures of him exist wayy after 1929 Gabrielgames123 (talk) 06:28, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

As I said previously, you need to gain consensus for this change, Gabrielgames123. Are you going to start an RFC? Complete information can be found at WP:RFC.

I contend that any good quality portrait photo is preferable in a biography to a painting. In this case, the photo is an excellent one by Mathew Brady, the most famous and accomplished American portrait photographer of the 19th century, and the painting is mediocre. I am not claiming that Van Buren's notability is due to being photographed. That is a straw man argument. If there was an earlier, high quality photo of Van Buren taken closer to his presidency, that would be great. But there isn't. I reject that Hoover comparison because any photo, whether black and white or in color, is inherently more accurate and therefore more encyclopedic than a painting. We have no original color photos of Abraham Lincoln but many outstanding black and white photos of him. When a photo is not available, as with George Washington, an excellent painting is the only choice.

The following books discuss or use this Brady portrait photo:

Mathew Brady and the Image of History, 1997

American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection, 2013

Martin Van Buren - Old Kinderhook, 2008 (cover image)

Martin Van Buren and the emergence of American popular politics, 2002 (cover image)

Martin Van Buren, A Life from Beginning to End, 2017 (cover image)

How to Draw the Life and Times of Martin Van Buren, 2005

Encyclopedia of Presidents: Martin Van Buren, 1987

Depth Effects: Dimensionality from Camera to Computation, 2024 (detailed analysis of this specific photo on pages 87-88)

The Complete Book of US Presidents, 2020 (full, uncropped version)

Mathew Brady and His World, 1977 (analysis of the photo on page 80)

Facing the Light: Historic American Portrait Daguerreotypes, 1977

Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861, 2000 (six sentences of analysis of this photo)

The notion that Wikipedia somehow created the prominence of this photo which has been well known for about 170 years is unsupported by any facts. Five of the book mentioned above pre-date Wikipedia.

I also disagree with the edit summary I am so sick of seeing the image of an elderly and frail van buren. The reason why many people think of van buren this way is because of this article and it pisses me off. The google image section is plagued with this photo. There is no evidence to call Van Buren "frail" at the time this photo was taken. He was retired but was still a highly active observer and analyst of American politics in the mid to late 1850s. The fame of this photo long predates Google and Wikipedia and the internet, and these mentions are indications of recentism and overly emotional objections to the photo. Cullen328 (talk) 07:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

WP:ILIKEIT... Gabrielgames123 (talk) 17:28, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Please revise the question per Wikipedia:RFCNEUTRAL Dw31415 (talk) 11:02, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

I've changed it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:50, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

? Gabrielgames123 (talk) 16:11, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Kind of a tough call due to the issues of portrait during the most famous part of his life vs. photo after his period of famousness. Changing either part would make it an obvious choice between the two. All things considered, I think I would push for the photo. It doesn't show him at his prime, but it does ACTUALLY show him. Lulfas (talk) 18:08, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Gabrielgames123, are these the main options under consideration?

• 
  First year in office, 1837
• 
  Official portrait , painted 1858
• 
  20 years later, taken ca. 1855-1858

And is the expectation that all of them will be in the article, and the question is really just which one should be at the top vs. in a relevant ==Section==? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

im back now srry i was asleep Gabrielgames123 (talk) 16:10, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

I like the current photograph. I prefer a photo over the paintings. Knitsey (talk) 16:35, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

hold on for a second gonna ask my mentor a question Gabrielgames123 (talk) 16:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Id gladly keep https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Martin_Van_Buren_edit.jpg in postpresidency, that is more well known that the 1855 one

Edit: and also higher quality Gabrielgames123 (talk) 16:20, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

That is NOT an official portrait, that was made by a guy named GPA Healy in 1858, 17 years after his presidency. Gabrielgames123 (talk) 16:21, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

The middle one is the one in Portraits of presidents of the United States#White House Historical Association presidential portraits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

My point still stands, it was made in 1858 Gabrielgames123 (talk) 16:25, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Okay, but why does that matter? There's no statute that says Official^® Presidential Portraits must be made during the president's time in office. A portrait can be made later and still be the official one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Were talking about wikipedia not the white house Gabrielgames123 (talk) 16:30, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

I think we're talking about whether the middle image is correct described as "an official portrait" or "NOT an official portrait". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

yeah the 1837 one should triumph Gabrielgames123 (talk) 16:23, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

There was a lengthy discussion of the infobox image, featuring exactly these two choices, in 2024; you can find the first part of it in Talk:Martin Van Buren/Archive 1, and the second part (which was an RFC) in Talk:Martin Van Buren/Archive 2.

I personally started the discussion because I thought Van Buren looked like a scarecrow in the photograph. However, the great majority of contributors favored the photograph anyway. It is a cropped version of a featured picture, and it has been our infobox picture of Van Buren for a very long time.

So I basically lost that argument, but I'm happy that there was a strong consensus. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:25, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

• Photo Per Cullen328. I don't think I fully grasp the objections to the photo. It shows what he looked like. Personal opinions on his appearance are irrelevant. Polygnotus (talk) 22:41, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  The idea that a photo is somehow inherently preferable to a painting is a Wikipedia hallucination. Go to Amazon and type "Martin Van Buren biography" in the search box. Do you get a lot of photos or a lot of paintings? The rest of the world kind of likes the paintings, although one sees both (and also some caricatures). Over at Andrew Jackson, the available photographs are mostly unflattering, although the painting that we are currently using is, in my opinion, not sufficiently true to life. I like the image of him that is on the $20 bill, but I have never proposed that we use it, because I don't think other editors would be interested in (a photo of) an engraving. Meanwhile at John Tyler, we are currently using a painting, but there have been some popular photographs as well. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:02, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

  But of course we are writing an encyclopedia and they are trying to sell books (presumably) so they find different things (un)important. If my goal is to sell books I would put him on the cover riding a dinosaur while shooting laser guns. Polygnotus (talk) 01:08, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

  Dinosaurs and laser guns? Whatever.

  I have not found much MOS guidance about what's important. The relevant policy is MOS:LEADIMAGE, and I don't interpret it as saying anything about media, such as photographs, paintings, etc. It does say that the image should give readers visual confirmation that they've arrived at the right page, so I suppose recognizability, or even familiarity, is a good thing. It also says the image should be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, which is why I turned to Amazon. But neither of these criteria would settle the argument we're having. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:32, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

  You are correct that there is no guidance, beyond the image needing to have an educational purpose and being WP:PERTINENT to the subject. Things like painting vs photograph, color vs black & white, flattering vs unflattering, old age vs younger age – none of those are official rules. Editors are allowed to make up whatever personal criteria they want, but they should avoid imposing their personal opinions on others (e.g., "I think all photographs are always more accurate than any paintings" or "I believe that flattering images are non-neutral"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

• The idea that photos are inherently better or more accurate than paintings is bizarre to me. For as long as photography has existed as a medium, people have been manipulating photographs either through staging, composition and lighting, or through post-processing. We should be deciding which image to use here on the basis of the actual images in question, not just assuming that photographs are somehow inherently superior to other forms of portraiture. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:37, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
• Status quo - Looks like someone cropped it after the last deadlock. This version or the cropped version has been stable for 8 years. Nothing has really changed since the last RFC. Let's move on... Nemov (talk) 21:27, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Official portrait? Says who?

The claim has been made that the 1858 George Peter Alexander Healy painting is the "official portrait" of Van Buren. To that, I say . That is a dubious claim that should be discussed.

Historian Feather Schwartz Foster writes Congress did not pay for “official” POTUS portraits until the early 20th century. Healy used previous portraits, photographs or etchings to depict Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Chester Alan Arthur. That calls into question the "official" designation and raises the very strong possibility that Healy's painting is a derivative work of Brady's daguerrotype. Compare Brady's photo to Healy's painting. A previous criticism of the Brady photo is that it portrays Van Buren as an elderly man with bags under his eyes, hopelessly unruly sideburns. Healy's painting (which I personally like much better than the unfocused, ruddy cheeked, dark suit on a dark background Henry Inman painting) also shows an elderly man with bags under his eyes and unruly sideburns. Compare also the lines on his forehead in both images. Healy adjusted the head angle and modified the mouth to a bit of a smile but the similarities are striking. I am reminded that Mary Todd Lincoln had to plead with her husband Abe to brush his hopelessly unruly hair before sitting for a photo portrait. The similarities of the two depictions of Van Buren combined with Foster's commentary leads me to believe that Brady's photo was Healy's main source material.

So, what makes a 19th century presidential portrait "official"? Take a look at the web page for this painting on the website of the White House Historical Association. It says that the Healy painting is in the collection of the White House, but nowhere refers to it as an "official portrait". The White House Historical Association has a website gallery of presidential portraits and is an excellent source of information about the presidency, but it is a private, nonprofit group established by Jacqueline Kennedy that has no power to designate a portrait of a president as "official". Congress did so for over a century and allocated money for official presidential portraits that were painted in the years immediately after a presidency, but Donald Trump signed legislation putting an end to that practice in 2018. Do any other editors have actual evidence that the Healy painting is "official"? Cullen328 (talk) 10:07, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

There is no such thing as an official painting of a former US president (in the context of Wikipedia) and if there was it would be irrelevant to people writing an encyclopedia. That is a dubious claim that should be discussed. Nah. Polygnotus (talk) 16:24, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

The status is typically defined as being a portrait used by the White House Historical Association on their gallery. NerdAssembledy (talk) 18:18, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't see any claim in the article about an official portrait.

I'm not aware of any law that says an official portrait must have been paid for by Congress. Are you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

I did not say that the dubious claim was in the article but the dubious claim is made on this talk page when evaluating the suitability of one particular image. The dubious claim is also in the Commons file description page. If Congress allocates funds to create an official portrait, as it regularly did for over a century until 2018, then it is reasonable to call any such painting an official portrait. There may possibly have been some 19th century process for designating a presidential portrait as "official". If so, what was it? Cullen328 (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

I think that being chosen for the National Portrait Gallery (United States), is effectively "the process". The 1858 Healy painting is the NPG portrait. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Being chosen for the collection of the National Portrait Gallery cannot possibly be the criterion for "official portrait" when the National Portrait Gallery owns multiple portraits of most and probably all presidents, and a quick Google search shows several portraits each of Washington, Lincoln, Obama and Trump in their collection. In the case of Van Buren, their website shows that they own at least 22 Van Buren portraits of varying quality and media, including a different Mathew Brady daguerrotype. Also, Healy did at least two portraits of Van Buren, the first one, better in my opinion, being painted a year earlier in 1857, and also in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Cullen328 (talk) 19:31, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

It sounds like you've done a lot of research on this. Would you like to add some of that to Official portrait? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

So far, I have not found any reliable source that defines an official presidential portrait in the 19th century, so I am using logic and the absence of evidence in this talk page discussion. Cullen328 (talk) 20:34, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Historical reputation

"Historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel states that Van Buren was America's greatest president, arguing that "historians have grossly underrated his many remarkable accomplishments in the face of heavy odds". Sounds like WP:FRINGE to me. Is Jeffrey Rogers Hummel notable enough for this to warrant inclusion? Jah77 (talk) 09:36, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Agreed, and the following statement, about Martin Van Buren being the "most forgettable", likewise looks like WP:FRINGE. Bruce leverett (talk) 19:27, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Historical ranking

The last sentence of the third paragraph of the lead until recently said, "... historians and political scientists often rank him as an average or below-average U.S. president ...". The Legacy section makes the following slightly different statement: "His presidency is considered to be average, at best, by historians." These are more or less equivalent ways to say the same thing. Both link to our article about the historical rankings of presidents. That article has a chart of the results of rankings of the presidents in the last few decades, and indeed, Van Buren has been exactly in the middle as recently as 1996, and close to it as recently as 2018.

Generally, the lead should agree with the main body of the article. The recent change in the lead to say "... historians and political scientists often rank him as a below-average U.S. president ..." causes it to disagree with the Legacy section (and also with the article about historical rankings). Bruce leverett (talk) 03:30, 7 July 2026 (UTC)