First Lady Portrait Art: Eleanor Roosevelt Print

Designed by graphic artist Meneese Wall, this beautiful portrait and accompanying biography features First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Born on October 11, 1884, in New York City, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was cared for by her maternal grandmother after she was orphaned in 1894. She later attended Allenswood Academy, a private finishing school in London. In 1902, she met Franklin Delano Roosevelt, her fifth cousin once removed. The couple married on March 17, 1905; five of their six children lived to adulthood: Anna, James, Elliott, Franklin, and John. She supported her husband's political career and cared for him after he contracted polio in 1921. Entering the White House as first lady in 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt transformed the role, holding press conferences, traveling the country, delivering radio broadcasts, and expressing her opinions in a syndicated newspaper column, “My Day.” Following her husband’s death in 1945, President Harry S. Truman appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations, where she played an important role in drafting the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She died on November 7, 1962, at the age of seventy-eight.