Painting of Picking the Site
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- 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
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Memorial Artwork
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Visual Work of Art
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Painting of Picking the Site
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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.
Brough's Picking the Site commemorates a visit made to the future grounds of the University of the South. In 1857, a number of major donors and Episcopal clergymen, Bishop Leonidas Polk and John Armfield among them, came to the Cumberland Plateau to observe the domain. This was prior to a vote to select the official site for the University of the South; Leonidas Polk argued on strong terms for Sewanee because of its diocesean convenience and its centrality within the slaveholding states. At the time of the vote, Polk was the only member of the university board of trustees to have visited Sewanee. Although the natural beauty of the Cumberland Plateau is often emphasized in the decision to found the University of the South at Sewanee, it had important political benefits that framed the university as a premier choice for the sons of the Confederacy.
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26" x 31.5" watercolor painting
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Brough, Richard
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1958
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2014
Position: 743 (97 views)