Painting of the First Trustee Meeting
Item
- Legacies Classification
- Memorial Type
- Memorial Context
- Title
- Background and Context
- Physical Description
- Creator/Participating Person(s)
- Date created, installed or dedicated
- Date Modified
- Historical Period
- Location: Institution, City, State
- Wikidata
-
Memorial Artwork
-
Visual Work of Art
-
Painting of the First Trustee Meeting
-
Richard Brough, professor of art at the University of Alabama for nearly forty years (1948-1987), painted a series of watercolors in honor of Sewanee's centennial in 1958. He was commissioned by the Associated Alumni, a group of Sewanee alumni, and the resulting images mark four dramatic scenes from Sewanee's mythologized past. They now hang in the Sewanee Inn. During his tenure at the University of Alabama, Brough served as the head of the Art Department. His connections to Sewanee were not particularly robust, but his artistic contributions to the university continue to reinforce the dramatic narrative of a battered but ultimately triumphant aristocratic institution.
The first board of trustees meeting, hosted with the intention of establishing a new University of the South, occurred on July 4, 1857. The trustees met at a picturesque outlook on Lookout Mountain in east Tennessee near their lodgings. The first trustee meeting happened before the decision to build the University of the South at Sewanee. Present were some of the major founders of the university, including Bishop of Louisiana Leonidas Polk, who would go on to be a founding member of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Confederate States.
-
26" x 31.5" watercolor painting
-
Brough, Richard
-
1958
-
2014
Position: 404 (129 views)