How do you frame the First Lady of Law, Sandra Day O’Connor? That’s the question 25 amateur and professional painters, all members of a New York portrait society called the Painting Club, set out to answer in this National Portrait Gallery exhibit. Commissioned last year to honor the retirement of the first woman on the Supreme Court, the paintings all fall to the right of the centrist jurist: staid and conservative. Yet each carries the faint glimpse of the revealed O’Connor. Jean Marcellino, for example, fixes on the mercurial green glint in O’Connor’s eye (pictured)—capturing the sense of mischief that would inform the Justice’s Lawrence v. Texas argument that the state could ban sodomy, by God, but not gay sex alone. Lured by O’Connor’s jabot collar, Aaron Shikler and Walter Bernard get sucked into frilly detail work; in addition, the latter goes with an inexplicably broad-shouldered O’Connor, perhaps to illustrate the heft of her decisive SCOTUS swing. For no good reason whatsoever, Gil Eisner replaces the tepid backdrop with a sunset—but the gathering storm over her head can only be a reference to the disastrous implications of her majority vote in Bush v. Gore. Even David Levin’s wiry watercolor—which, from a distance, hints at a more daring approach—is equally as restrained upon closer inspection. Some models just don’t sit well. As a drunken John Riggins once said: “Come on, Sandy baby, loosen up.” the exhibition is on view from 11:30 a.m.n7 p.m. daily, to Monday, Oct. 8, at the National Portrait Gallery, 8th & F Sts. NW. Free. (202) 633-1000.