[2] Her mother did not initially agree with her decision to pursue an art career, but in 1975 an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant enabled her to get a start.
She encourages students to devote more of their class time looking at the model for their portraits than actually painting, to avoid self-criticism, and refrain from naming individual parts of the subject.
[2] Sprung learned what Rankin wore when she was sworn in, rented a costume, hired a model, and found a copy of the newspaper to produce the scene in the painting.
[2] She painted it over the course of nine months, facing minor challenges in White House protocol when she wanted to move things around in different rooms to improve the lighting or the scene.
[5] According to Maegan Vazquez of CNN, the portrait shows Obama "appearing to take a brief moment to get comfortable inside one of the most formal rooms in the White House".
[5] Dan Kois of Slate said the portrait "pays tribute to the past while pulling presidential portraiture gently into the 21st century" and praised the gilded frame.
[10] Will Heinrich of the New York Times compared the portrait to those by other artists, noting the way Sprung's work "is a reminder that oil paint remains the best technology for really looking at someone" and presents a "compromise between the Obamas' desire to innovate and the imperative to respect the White House aesthetic".