The portrait was intended to be hung on the first floor of the California State Capitol with the other gubernatorial portraits, but the Joint Rules Committee of California State Assembly voted that it be displayed on a third-floor stairwell, following an eight-minute debate. The Democratic California legislator Lou Papan said that the portrait was "very well done ... it captures a lot of the expressions we all remember", to which a fellow Democratic legislator replied, "Yeah, like the warmth in his eyes." On the placing of the painting Bachardy remarked that "If you saw some of the paintings hanging in the Capitol, you'd see why I am not at all insulted that my portrait of Brown is not among them."