Materials/Media:Thin oil on linen, primed with white oil
Date Documented:2007
Condition:Excellent
Description:Young male in confederate uniform, no hat, dark hair and eyes, portrait from waist up, standing or seated. Artist signature is faint in orange at the lower left.
History:The portrait was restored and preserved in 1989 by Cynthia Stowe and D. D. Minault at Cumberland Art Conservation Center in Nashville, TN. The date and occasion of the painting are unknown. Because of its previous location and owner the portrait is included in the book Mississippi Portraiture, compiled by Vera Jacobs Speakes, published by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the state of Mississippi, 1987, p. 145. The date of the painting is listed there as c. 1877.
Notes:The subject is the owner’s great-grandfather. Richard Watson Jones (b. May 16, 1837, d. Dec. 17, 1914), married to Elizabeth Susan "Bettie" Spratley, served as captain, major, and finally lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army, taught mathematics at Randolph Macon College (Ashland, VA), was president of Petersburg (VA) Female College, president of Martha Washington College (Abingdon, Virginia), Professor of chemistry at the University of Mississippi, and the first president of the Industrial Institute and College at Columbus, Mississippi, where he was in charge of the initial building and hiring the faculty. That school later became Mississippi State College for Women and is now Mississippi University for Women. He retired to Laurel, Mississippi, where, after his death, the portrait hung in the home of a granddaughter, Evelyn Jones (Mrs. Walter S., Jr.) Love, until her death in 1988, when it was passed on to the current owner.
