Drawing Collection

Virginia Geological Survey sketches by William Thompson Russell Smith (1812-1896)

Drawing Collection, Paintings Collection

Virginia Geological Survey, Records, 1834-1903. Accession 24815, State Government Records Collection
52 sketches. Pencil, ink, watercolor, pastel, and oil on paper and cardboard. Dimensions: Vary from 11 11/16 x 7 11/16 in. to 23 9/16 x 18 1/8 in.


Visual Studies Collection.
1 sketch. Watercolor on paper. Dimensions: 12 5/8 x 8 ½ in.

One hundred and seventy-five years ago this summer, William Barton Rogers and William Thompson Russell Smith boarded a train in Pennsylvania bound for Washington, D.C. Their ultimate destination was the western part of Virginia, where they intended to describe and document geological features. Rogers (1804-1882), a geologist, chemist, physicist, and professor at the University of Virginia, had begun work on a geological survey of Virginia in 1835. Although funding from the General Assembly ceased in 1842, Rogers believed a final report would eventually be authorized. He hired Smith, an artist he had worked with on previous geological publications, to illustrate this final report.

William Thompson Russell Smith (1812–1896), better known as Russell Smith, was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His father brought the family to rural Pennsylvania in 1819 before moving to the growing town of Pittsburgh to be near schools. After studying with the portrait artist James Lambdin, Smith began developing a reputation as a theatrical scene painter and commercial artist. His lifelong affection for landscape painting and his work in scientific illustration both prepared him for his travels with Rogers.… Read the rest

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Collection of Pierre Daura Paintings and Drawings

Drawing Collection, Paintings Collection

D1:004
c. 1920–1974

120 works of art, including 57 watercolors; 24 oil paintings; and pieces in tempera, gouache, pastel, ink, pencil, charcoal, wood, and mixed media, ranging in size from 7 x 10 inches to 32 x 26 inches

D1:004 Collection of Pierre Daura Paintings and Drawings

Pierre Daura (1896–1976), born Pere Francesc Joan Daura i García, was a noted Catalan-American artist. Following early training at the School of Fine Arts (La Llotja) in Barcelona, Daura moved to Paris in 1914 to complete his artistic education. After military service in Minorca during World War I, he returned to Paris in 1920 and became part of its vibrant postwar modern art scene. Daura married the American artist Louise Heron Blair in 1928, and—following the outbreak of World War II—he spent the second half of his life in her home state of Virginia. Daura produced many depictions of the landscape and people of Rockbridge County, where the family settled, and worked prolifically in a variety of media and styles. During the 1940s and 1950s, he also taught at Lynchburg College and Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

The Library of Virginia’s collection of Daura’s work represents both the longevity and breadth of his artistic career, with its greatest strength the images of people and places near his Virginia home. These include self-portraits done over three decades as well as portraits of his wife, their daughter Martha Daura, other family members, … Read the rest

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WPA Historic Houses Drawings Collection

Drawing Collection

D1:003
 c. 1932–1937
140 drawings in pen-and-ink, pencil, and watercolors, ranging in size from 25 x 35 cm to 40 x 45 cm 

D1:003 WPA Historic Houses Drawings Collection

The WPA Historic Houses Drawings Collection includes 140 images of houses, courthouses, churches, mill houses, and taverns, representing 39 Virginia counties. In the early- to mid-1930s, the Virginia State Commission on Conservation and Development’s Division of History and Archaeology received funds from the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Art Project to commission five artists to create drawings for a publication on historic Virginia shrines. Like other WPA-funded projects, the artists applied for work through local emergency relief offices before being assigned to the Federal Art Project. Several of the artists also contributed to other New Deal projects at the time, including stamp designs for the National Recovery Act and illustrations for the Index of American Design, a nationwide Federal Art Project. 

Under the direction of Hamilton J. Eckenrode, the commission’s Division of History and Archaeology began making a record of historic buildings in Virginia in 1932. Field assistant (and artist) Rex M. Allyn took photographs of buildings while on assignment to the Division’s Historic Highway Marker project. From 1932 to 1937, Allyn and four other artists—Edward A. Darby, Dorothea A. Farrington, E. Neville Harnsberger, and Elsie J. Mistie—each created numerous pen-and-ink and pencil drawings from the photographs. In some cases, the artists were asked to make … Read the rest

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Edward A. Darby Drawings Collection (Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion)

Drawing Collection

D1: 005
c. 1940
18 pen-and-ink drawings, ranging in size from 5-1/8 x 6-5/8 inches to 14-5/8 x 7-3/8 inches

Edward A. Darby Drawings Collection (Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion)

This collection of original illustrations and chapter head- and end-pieces was created by Edward A. Darby for Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion.   Compiled by workers of the Work Projects Administration’s state-sponsored Virginia Writers’ Project (1940), the book was initiated as one in a series of state guides begun in 1935 under the Federal Writers Project and was designed to give work to writers, editors, historians, and researchers.

All thirteen of the drawings used in Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion can be found in this collection of lighthearted, optimistic, and idealized images. The detailed artwork depicts iconic landmarks, historic sites, and symbols of the early-20th-century countryside that would be recognizable to many Virginians today. Also included in the collection are five additional drawings that do not appear in the guide. They represent an imagined Virginia, where tidewater monuments stand at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and where oxcarts and buggies share the landscape with speeding trains, automobiles, and airplanes.

Arrangement and access:
The collection is arranged in a single series, corresponding to the order in which the illustrations appear in Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion, followed by the five remaining drawings.

  • Edward A. Darby Drawings Collection (Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion)
    Edward A. Darby
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J. Bohannan Poster and Drawing Collection

Drawing Collection, Ephemera Collection, Photograph Collection, Print Collection

D1: 001
1989–2010
Mixed materials—including vintage prints, color snapshots, oil studies, finished drawings, process drawings, ink-jet printouts, flyers, and posters—ranging in size from 2 x 3 to 26 x 36 inches

D1:001 J. Bohannan Poster and Drawing Collection

Richmond-based painter J. Bohannan was born in New York City in 1950 and moved with his family at age two to Hilton Village, Newport News, and later, as a teenager, to Hopewell. After studying art at the Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bohannan worked as a salesman in his father’s art supply store, selling his own original artwork on the side. By his own admission, his paintings of the time were derivative of the European high art and contemporary abstraction he had studied at RPI. Then one day he picked up a copy of Matthew Baigell’s The American Scene: American Painting of the 1930s (1974) from a discount book bin. Until then, Bohannan says, he had never really seen, much less studied, modern American painting, despite four years of formal art education.

D1:001 J. Bohannan Poster and Drawing Collection

Working alongside street artists in Verona and Munich, copying famous Caravaggios and Bouchers in pastel on public sidewalks, Bohannan developed a passion for “plastic realism,” embedding human forms in visual space in a way that is, as Bohannan puts it, “more there than right”—that is, more materially … Read the rest

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