A Guide to the Virginia Division of the
Budget, Capitol Square Portrait Files,
1936-1962 Virginia Division of the Budget, State
Capitol Portrait Files, 1936-1962
27578
Virginia Division of the Budget, State Capitol Portrait
Files, 1936-1962. Accession 27578, State Records
Collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond,
Virginia.
Acquisition Information
Transferred from Division of the Budget on May 5,
1971.
Violet E. MacDougall was born in Canada c.1890. She
attended Regina College in Ontario and studied law at George
Washington University. From 1918 to 1933 she served as
executive secretary to governors Westmoreland Davis, E. Lee
Trinkle, Harry F. Byrd and John Garland Pollard. In July 1933
she married Pollard and the following year became a
naturalized citizen. In 1934 she assisted her husband in
raising $100,000 from private citizens to help establish the
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts where she worked as associate
director from 1940 to 1956. In addition, she was a member of
the Federated Arts Council of Richmond and served as a
national Democratic committeewoman from Virginia from 1940 to
1968. She died on 2 January 1977.
The State Capitol Building Portrait files consist of
correspondence and biographical information and notes
regarding the portraits hanging in the Capitol Building,
Governor's Mansion, Supreme Court Building and the Blanton and
Finance Buildings. These records were compiled in 1959-1960 by
Violet MacDougall Pollard, Art Consultant, under the Division
of the Budget. Mrs. Pollard, widow of former Virginia governor
John Garland Pollard, initiated a project in the late 1940s to
restore labels to portraits in the Capitol but never had time
to complete it. In 1959 she decided to resume the project.
Arranged alphabetically, the files contain correspondence,
newspaper clippings, reference notes and the text of labels
related to the portraits in these buildings. Most of the
material in these files relates to efforts to establish the
name and dates of the painter of each portrait. Correspondence
in these files pertaining to this research begins as early as
1936 and continues into 1962 with the bulk between 1959 and
1960. In 1958 Paul P. Kiehart, a New York art conservator, was
hired by the Commonwealth of Virginia to examine the
portraits. His survey forms, dated January 1959, which are a
basic part of these files, describe the condition of each
painting as well as proposed treatment. General records
include miscellaneous correspondence, artist information and a
listing of the appraised value of each portrait. Additional
records include information related to the statues of Henry
Clay and Edgar Allen Poe, the busts of Jefferson Davis and
Alexander Stephens, the Three Ships painting and the Lady
Astor clock, all part of the State Capitol Building
series.
Organized into four series: Series I. Capitol Building;
Series II. Governor's Mansion; Series III. Supreme Court
Building; Series IV. Blanton and Finance Buildings.
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