Correspondence regarding management of portraits, 1926-1978

Containers:

Box-folder 7-2 to 7-3

Scope and content:

Correspondence pertains to commissioning of portraits of justices and copies of portraits for the Court, restoration of portraits, loans, gifts and provenance of portraits, and protocol for the commissioning and hanging of portraits.

The correspondence documents the Court's acquisition of portraits who served before the Virginia Bar Association began donating portraits of each justice to the Court. It pertains to acquisition of portraits of George Wythe (served 1779-1788); James Mercer (served 1781-1788, 1789-1793); Spencer Roane (served 1795-1822), Drury Hinton (served 1883-1894); Joseph Kelly (served 1915-1924; 1925); Jessie West (served 1922 to 1929); Robert R. Prentis (served 1916-1931); and Louis Epes (served 1929-1935). Correspondence also documents the commissioning and presentation, in 1963, of copies of portraits by artist Robert Nurnberger of portraits of John Blair (served 1779-1789), William Fleming (served 1781-1824), William T. Joynes (served 1866-1882), Francis T. Brooke (served 1811-1851), and Robert Stanard (served 1839-1846).

Correspondents in this series include Violet McDowell Pollard, Division of the Budget, State Capitol; William Young, conservation and restoration specialist; Robert L. Nurnberger, Chief Justices Edward Hudgins, C. Vernon Spratley, and John W. Eggleston; Philip N. Stern, Chairman and Secretary of the Art Commission of Virginia; Governor Mills E. Godwin, William M. Blackwell, Chairman, Virginia Bar Association Committee on Portraits, Judge John N. Kenna, West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals; D.V. Chapman, Jr., and H.E. Gassman, Superintendents, Grounds and Buildings, Commonwealth of Virginia; and Leo Fox, alias Charles J. Fox. Fox was a purveyor of portraits copied from photographs by an anonymous painter and sold as originals.

Arrangement:

Chronological.

Physical description:

2 folders

Access and use