Odd Story of Trump's Allegedly Fake Renoir Surfaces

First fake news, now fake art? According to Donald Trump biographer Tim O'Brien, the president has a fake version of impressionist painting "Two Sisters (On the Terrace)" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir—only Trump asserts that it's an original. On Vanity Fair's Inside the Hive podcast, O'Brien says Trump repeatedly told him the painting was an original when O'Brien saw it on Trump's private jet while writing 2005's TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald. O'Brien—who is from Chicago, where the original is thought to hang—says he was unable to convince Trump he was wrong. Perhaps the Art Institute of Chicago might. The museum tells the Chicago Tribune that the real Renoir has been hanging on its wall since 1933.

Renoir sold the painting to an art dealer in 1881. It was then sold to an individual who donated it to the museum, which is "satisfied that our version is real," a spokesperson tells the Tribune. Trump's version apparently now hangs in Trump Tower. Based on a photo taken there that shows the painting, "it seems clearly to be a copy of that famous Chicago picture," an art historian adds, per ArtNet, which cites a second art historian who agrees that Renoir never painted exact replicas of his own work. Based on his knowledge of Trump, O'Brien doesn't expect him to change his story now. The White House hasn't commented. (More Donald Trump stories.)