Robert Anderson is an American portraitist who is best known for his painting of his old college friend, President George W. Bush.

Anderson graduated from Yale University with a degree in American Studies in 1968 and the School of Fine Arts in Boston in 1972. He initially planned to become a high school teacher after graduating from Yale, but ended up serving in the US Naval Reserve before returning to school to study art. After graduation, he went on to win the First Prize in the National Portrait Seminar Competition in New York City in 1981. He also served as illustrator for the John H. Breck Company, a shampoo brand, for fifteen years, creating the “Breck Girl” who was featured in print advertising and commercials on American and Canadian television. Some notable Breck girls include Brooke Shields, Kim Basinger, Cybill Shepherd, and Jaclyn Smith.

Anderson has produced over 250 commissioned portraits. From 1984-1989, he was commissioned by the US Postal Service to create portraits for the Great Americans Series of postage stamps. The people he painted for the series included John Harvard (the namesake of Harvard University), Chief Red Cloud of the Oglala Sioux Nation, and Chief Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Sioux Nation. Other notable commissions that he has received include portraits of Massachusetts governors, William F. Weld and Edward J. King, former Yale chaplain and SANE/FREEZE President William Sloane Coffin, and most notably President George W. Bush, whom he painted twice.

Anderson first painted Bush for the Yale Club of New York in 2003. Bush was a classmate of his, graduating in 1968; they shared a Spanish class. Coincidentally, Bush was also studying for his MBA at Harvard Business School whilst Anderson was studying portraiture at the School of Fine Arts. They reconnected after Anderson wrote a letter to the Yale Club asking to paint his portrait. He later received a commission for perhaps his most famous work, a portrait of Bush for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery which he described as “the plum of plums." At the unveiling of the portrait, Bush explained his reasoning for picking Anderson to do his portrait by saying, “I needed to find a person who would do the painting that would be a good and forgiving friend.”

Anderson describes his process of capturing likeness as a process of revealing, saying, “You’re trying to depict the randomness of nature, in peeling the shell away to try to get underneath.”  His portraits aim to evoke both a spiritual and physical likeness to create a sense of familiarity in the viewer, even if they are unacquainted with the sitter. In his portrait of Bush, it is Anderson’s friendship with the president that shines through, resulting in a presidential portrait without the usual barrier of separation.