A flower arrangement made of immortelles (everlastings) at the 1893 World’s Fair intended to depict President Grover Cleveland. The floral display in the Horticultural Building turned heads and turned stomachs.

This article in the Chicago Tribune about the “Caricature in Immortelles” included a headline declaring “The Alleged Cleveland Picture in the Horticultural Building an Atrocity.”

Under the great dome of the horticultural building, just opposite the main entrance, through which most strangers approached the beautiful display of plants and flowers, is a site to make those who have learned to admire the dignity of the building and its exhibit shudder and turn pale. It is a great caricature done in immortelles of some unfortunate man who come from the fact that the individual in the attempted portrait wears a mustache and has a heavy jaw, may fairly be supposed President Cleveland. White, yellow and brilliant purple flowers are used in the picture, which is bounded by a red, white, and blue frame. The color combination, regarded from an aesthetic point of view, cannot be considered an unqualified success and suggests two thoughtful minds that a critic of decoration might not find his office at the Horticultural Building a sinecure.

If “Uncle John” or whoever was responsible for the atrocity hoped to compel the admiration of visitors through its medium he must be grievously disappointed. A few of the comments made by those who saw the immortelle arrangement yesterday should be enough to convince him that the public has better taste than he gives it credit for.

“Isn’t it hideous?” said an old lady looking at it with an expression of disgust. “Looks like a set piece in our fairs to home,” observed a sun-browned farmer.

“It would make a good doormat, wouldn’t it, ma?” piped a small girl with ideas of her own.

An intelligent old gentleman expressed his views of the decoration forcibly:

“It is a great pity,” he said earnestly, “that so beautiful and dignified and exhibit should be ruined, or at least so seriously marred, by such a piece of claptrap. There is no person of refinement who will not deplore the introduction of such a garish piece of bad taste. By strangers it will be taken as incontrovertible evidence of the crudeness of the Chicagoan in all matters requiring a fine sense of the fitness of things.”

The Deseret Evening News also reported on the peculiar presidential portrait in petals:

“Another curious design is the portrait of Cleveland executed in calla lilies and immortelles—the national colors in the same flowers being arranged in diagonal folds and constituting the frame—and the background being formed by ivy leaves against which the profile is distinctly outlined. The likeness of the President is not striking but the picture is interesting from its ingenuity of execution and design.”

President Cleveland had recently visited Chicago for Opening Day of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Fortunate for all, his tour of the fairgrounds skipped over the Horticultural Building. The curiosity did not appear to have lived up to its “everlasting” name and may have ended up in the compost pile soon after the Fair opened.

SOURCES

“Caricature in Immortelles” Chicago Tribune May 5, 1893, p. 3.

“Perdita at the Fair” Salt Lake City (UT) Deseret Evening News May 13, 1893, p. 13.