This is one of three portraits Zorn executed of American presidents.

The other two are:

• Grover Cleveland

• Theodore Roosevelt

William Howard Taft, born September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio, died March 8, 1930, in Washington D.C., was an American politician (Republican) and lawyer. Taft was the 27th President of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930. Taft became a lawyer in 1880. From 1888 to 1890, he was a judge on the Ohio Supreme Court, and from 1896 to 1900, he was a law professor at the University of Cincinnati. The sitting president, William McKinley, appointed him in 1900 as the chairman of the commission that governed the newly acquired Philippine Islands, and Taft served as governor there from July 1901. For a time in the autumn of 1906, he also oversaw the administration of Cuba.

In 1909, Taft became the 27th President of the United States after his party brother Theodore Roosevelt declined re-election and endorsed Taft as the party's candidate. During Taft's presidency, two states were admitted to the Union in 1912, Arizona and New Mexico, and that same year, Taft also pushed through Congress a decision to fortify the Panama Canal Zone.

In the 1912 presidential election, Taft lost with 3,484,000 votes to the Democratic challenger Woodrow Wilson's 6,290,000 votes. His significant loss was primarily due to the split in Republican votes, as Theodore Roosevelt no longer supported Taft due to disagreements over tariff policy and ran for the presidency himself as the candidate of the newly formed Progressive Party.

After his term as president, Taft became a professor of law at Yale University from 1913 to 1921 and served as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1921 until just a month before his death in 1930.

Taft administered the presidential oath of office to Calvin Coolidge in 1925 and Herbert Hoover in 1929. He passed away in 1930 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington D.C.

Taft married Helen Herron in 1886. He was the father of Robert Taft and the great-grandfather of Bob Taft, who served as governor of Ohio.