An Andy Warhol portrait rejected by Donald Trump more than four decades ago is going up for auction – and the famed artist’s diaries reveal his first impressions of the future president.

When Trump met Warhol in 1981, the former was a rising business magnate and the latter was among the most famous American artists of the 20th century.

The Trump Tower on 5th Avenue was under construction at the time and The Donald was looking for artwork to hang in the lobby – the very same one he would descend on the golden escalator to make his first bid for the White House in 2015 to announce.

Trump commissioned a series of paintings from Warhol of his new 58-story skyscraper but ultimately refused to buy the portraits, outraged the painter who later claimed he “hated the Trumps.”

Fast forward more than 40 years to today, when the artwork will sell at an auction house on Park Avenue for an estimated $700,000.

As the painting awaits the highest bidder’s paddle, diary entries from the prince of pop art offer a unique insight into the New York high society that brought Trump international fame – and the artist’s real-time impressions of the young real estate titan.

“I had to meet Donald Trump in the office,” Warhol scribbled in April 1981, according to auction house Phillips. “Donald Trump looks really good.”

The unlikely pair was introduced by then-Art Director of Interview magazine Marc Balet, who was cataloging the stores that would open in the Trump Tower atrium.

It was Trump’s then-wife Ivana who suggested he meet with Warhol to discuss painting portraits of the building to hang inside, Balet told Gothamist from his home in Connecticut.

“It was so strange, these people are so rich,” Warhol wrote during their first conversation about Trump and his rich friends. “Yesterday they were talking about buying a building for $500 million or something.”

“They raved about the Balducci’s lunch, but they just chose it,” he recalled of their meeting at Manhattan’s since-closed gourmet market.

“I think because they go to so many places that have food. And they had no drinks, they all just had Tabs,” he continued, referring to the popular diet pop of the 1980s.

‘He’s a tough guy. Nothing has been arranged yet, but I’m going to make a few paintings and show them to them,” Warhol concluded in his notes.

Trump ultimately decided to hire Warhol, so the artist visited his office to photograph the model of what Trump Tower would look like when finished.

He painted two different sets of the paintings, which he called “New York Skyscrapers” — four in gold and four in silver, with the intention of selling each set for $100,000, Balet told the outlet.

Warhol sought to capture the building’s modernity and glamor with black, silver and gold tones — even covering the surface with “diamond dust” and sprinkling crushed glass onto the wet paint, the auction house said.

However, when Mr. and Mrs. Trump visited Warhol’s Factory, they were disappointed with the lack of color coordination. They decided not to buy the paintings and never paid Warhol for his work.

“The Trumps came down… I showed them the Trump Tower paintings I had done. … (It was) a mistake to do so many, I think it confused them,” Warhol wrote in August 1981.

“I think Trump is kind of cheap, but I understand that feeling,” Warhol continued. “And Marc Balet, who set up the whole thing, was a little shocked.”

Balet claimed the paintings were rejected because they did not meet Trump’s standards.

“So then Andy took it out on me,” Balet told Gothamist. “He was furious that he had worked for nothing and was super mad at me, and then he got over it.”

But Warhol seemed to harbor his grudge against the Trumps for years.

When he encountered Ivana at a birthday party for infamous lawyer Roy Cohn in February 1983, the socialite seemed embarrassed when she saw the artist, asking what happened to the portraits.

“I had a speech in my mind to tell her, and I didn’t know whether to let her make it or not, and she tried to get away and she did,” Warhol reportedly wrote in his diary.

A year later, when asked to judge cheerleading tryouts for Trump’s short-lived New Jersey Generals team, he recalled deliberately being late to stick it to the billionaire couple.

“I still hate the Trumps because they never bought the paintings I did of Trump Tower,” he wrote at the time.

The six-figure price tag on the extraordinary painting being sold Tuesday could be worth even more than the auction house expected in light of the 2024 election, Phillips auction house vice chairman Robert Manley said.

“I was talking to a collector two weeks ago and his opinion was that if Trump lost, this wouldn’t sell and no one would buy it, and if Trump won it would sell for a huge price,” Manley told Gothamist.