Restaurant Buys Colbert Portrait For $50,605

NEW YORK (AP) — Stephen Colbert is about to be hung. A portrait of the TV satirist, that is.

Chad Walldorf’s chain of barbecue restaurants paid $50,605 for the portrait, which “The Colbert Report” sold on e-Bay, with the money going to charity.

The painting hung above the fireplace on the set of the Comedy Central show and depicts a debonair Colbert standing in front of a similar portrait of himself. Colbert announced the winner on Tuesday’s show.

Walldorf and his business partners, who oversee 17 Sticky Fingers restaurants throughout the South, intend to mount the portrait in their restaurant in Charleston, S.C., which is Colbert’s hometown.

“We don’t know much about art, but figured any time you can get two portraits for the price of one, then it must be a great deal … It’s like a buy-one-get-one-free on the American Dream,” Walldorf, 38, told The Associated Press in a recent interview, sounding appropriately Colbert-inflated.

The `Colbert’ crew has since filled its wall with a new portrait-within-a-portrait-within-a-portrait.

Would Walldorf like to see Colbert tape his show in front of the original?

“I probably wouldn’t ask him to do that,” said Walldorf, bringing up a recent episode in which “someone said something about taking the show on the road and he shot that down pretty quickly.”

Proceeds from the painting will benefit Westport, Conn.-based Save the Children.

“We saw it as a way to invest in a great cause while … doing something that we thought would be fun for our employees and customers,” Walldorf said.

“The Colbert Report,” a deadpan parody of combative, conservative talk shows, is a spinoff of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.” It has built a strong following of its own since debuting last year.