The painting first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916 "to illustrate a story about a horse thief, and captioned as a picture of the flight from the law. Only then did illustrate a story about Methodism."
The paper showed the painting to the four men: a gender studies professor, psychoanalyst, a military historian, and "psychotherapist and former Labor spin doctors," and asked them to analyze the President based on the painting and the story about it.
source : http://rawartint.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/