Bowman portrait to be unveiled as part of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College Presidential Portraits.

From October 26 to December 22, 1996, an exhibition was staged at the Maier Museum of Art, curated by Mary Andrea Schow ’98. It was entitled A Tradition of Excellence: The Presidential Portrait at Randolph- Macon Woman’s College. The exhibition featured portraits of R-MWC presidents including William Waugh Smith, William Alexander Webb, Theodore Henley Jack, William Fletcher Quillian, Robert Atwood Spivey, and Linda Koch Lorimer.

Schow’s introduction to the 1996 exhibition catalog reads, “Like so many other traditions at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, the presidential portrait enjoys a long and illustrious history. The practice of commissioning presidential portraits began when a group of students engaged William Merritt Chase to paint a portrait of President William Waugh Smith in 1906; it has continued for 90 years. The seven works in this exhibition illustrate the College’s tradition of acquiring portraits of its presidents painted by well-respected American artists. This practice was established not only to present good likenesses of former presidents but also to make significant additions to the College’s fine collection of American art. These paintings—by Chase, Harriet Fitzgerald, Eugene Speicher, Ernest Ipsen, Philip Pearlstein, James Aponovich, and Janet Fish—form a tradition of great distinction that will undoubtedly continue throughout the lifetime of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.”

A version of this exhibition is now being reprised to provide context for the unveiling of a new portrait of Kathleen Gill Bowman, president of R-MWC from 1994 to 2006, painted by Joseph Santore.

Born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Joseph Santore earned his BFA at the Philadelphia College of Art and his MFA at Yale University. His body of work includes many rich, painterly still lifes, but in the 1980s, he returned primarily to figure work. Many of his paintings show evocative situations or expressions, which is his method of pulling the viewer into the work, and quite often he pushes the figures forward within the space. Distortions and inconsistencies of perspective also give his work a quality of Cubist jumbling but with a lush, layered palette.

Santore was one of the artists considered for the Linda Lorimer portrait, a commission for which Janet Fish was ultimately selected. The Joseph Santore commission was made possible by former trustees and friends led by Frances Jones Giles ’65, Alice Hilseweck Ball ’61, Katherine Stark Caldwell ’74, Susan Braselton Fant ’84, Virginia Muller Shapard ’57, and Betty Nichols Street ’67, a bequest of Mary Frances Williams, R-MWC professor of art emeriti, and funds provided by the Members of the Maier Museum of Art, 2008.