After the U.S. Congress voted to release all of the files connected to the late, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s case in late 2025, social media users began recirculating a painting of former President Bill Clinton purportedly found in the financier’s New York City apartment.
The image and its alleged connection to Epstein spread on Reddit, Facebook and X.
The painting is authentic — as in, Australian-American artist Petrina Ryan-Kield genuinely created it using oil on canvas, not with artificial intelligence or photo editing tools. As of this writing, prints of the painting, titled “Parsing Bill,” were available to purchase from the prominent online art gallery Saatchi. A photograph also showed Ryan-Kield standing next to the work at the 2012 Tribeca Ball, an annual art exhibit run by the New York Academy of Art and a popular event for New York socialites.
However, it was not possible to independently verify that Epstein once hung the portrait in his apartment, as these rumors originated with unreliable tabloid reports. We first rated this claim “unproven” in 2019, shortly after Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors, according to the FBI. As of this writing, we have yet to find new information definitively proving Epstein owned such a portrait. In addition, Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, denied ever seeing the painting in Epstein’s apartment during a July 2025 interview with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Since we generally no longer use the “unproven” rating, we thus have not rated this claim.
In a 2019 interview with Snopes, Ryan-Kield could not corroborate reports that Epstein owned the painting. Here’s what she said in an email:
In 2012, as a grad student at the New York Academy of Art, I painted pictures of Presidents Clinton and Bush as part of my Master’s thesis. When the school put on a fundraiser at the Tribeca Ball that year, they sold my painting to one of the attendees. I had no idea who the buyer was at the time. As with most of my paintings, I had completely lost track of this piece when it was sold seven years ago. So it was a complete surprise to me to learn yesterday that it wound up in Epstein’s home.
Ryan-Kield reportedly told Artnet News that Clinton’s attire in the painting is a reference to Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress, a central part of the media circus around his affair with his former intern, who later became an anti-cyberbullying activist. According to ArtNet, Ryan-Kield said the painting, as part of a series of work she made, was supposed to be about “how opposition parties caricature presidents.”
Origin of rumor
On Aug. 14, 2019, the Daily Mail reported that Epstein “had a bizarre portrait of Bill Clinton in a dress hanging in his Manhattan mansion,” adding:
The picture depicting the former president apparently lounging on a chair in the Oval Office, wearing red heels and posing suggestively in a blue dress redolent of Monica Lewinsky was in a room off the stairway of the Upper East Side townhouse. The dress is also strikingly similar to one worn by Hillary Clinton at the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors.
The Mail included a photograph, purportedly taken by an anonymous source at Epstein’s apartment in October 2012. The image appeared to show a view of the painting hanging on a wall through an open doorway.
The New York Post later corroborated the Daily Mail’s reporting in an Aug. 14, 2019, story that cited unidentified law enforcement sources:
Jeffrey Epstein had an oil painting of Bill Clinton in a blue dress — lounging on a chair in the Oval Office — hanging up in his Manhattan townhouse, according to law enforcement sources.
“It was hanging up there prominently — as soon as you walked in — in a room to the right,” a source told The Post. “Everybody who saw it laughed and smirked.”
Neither the Daily Mail nor the New York Post are considered reliable sources.
Ghislaine Maxwell denies knowing about painting
Aside from the unreliable source of this rumor, Maxwell’s denial that she ever saw the painting — if true — also introduces reasonable doubt Epstein displayed the painting in his home, given her close relationship with him.
Here’s the relevant part of her interview with U.S. Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche, available through the Department of Justice (see Page 107 of this PDF):
TODD BLANCHE: When — when the Southern District of New York case kind of became public and there was a search warrant of Mr. Epstein’s house, there was like a — there was some sort of painting or picture with Mr. Clinton in like a blue dress that had been signed. Did you know — do you know where he got that picture or that painting?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: The first I saw it was in the press.
TODD BLANCHE: So you never observed that in his —
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No.
TODD BLANCHE: — brownstone?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No. I thought it was hideous.
TODD BLANCHE: What’s that again?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I thought it was hideous.
TODD BLANCHE: And — but you had never — so you don’t know, sitting here today, where Mr. Epstein got it?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No.
TODD BLANCHE: The circumstances in which he got it?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: No.
Blanche did not immediately respond to a question about how he knew of the painting, including whether he based his question off of tabloid reports or if he spoke to New York law enforcement to confirm the reports before asking Maxwell about it.
