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Collection of Pierre Daura Paintings and Drawings

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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The Pete Calos Photograph Collection

C1: 111
1977–2005
884 slides and approx. 500 electronic images

C1:111 The Pete Calos Photograph Collection

This collection contains the photographer’s 35mm Ektachrome color slides and digital scans of original prints. The images capture architectural, environmental, commercial, and cultural subjects in Virginia, including private homes, schools, restaurants, hotels, bridges, theaters, barns, churches, cemeteries, courthouses, post offices, fire and railway stations, drug stores, barber shops, banks, and service stations.

C1:111 The Pete Calos Photograph Collection

Pete Calos (1931-2019), an engineer at Allied Chemical for most of his professional life, made the images between 1977 and 2005 for local and architectural historians. In retirement, Calos began to write and illustrate his own travelogue presentations, with titles such as “Back Roads of Virginia,” “All 100 County Courthouses,” “Virginia Diners,” “Historic Route 1,” “Where Are You in Richmond?,” “Where Are You in Danville?,” and “McDonald’s Symphony.” Though a recreational photographer, Calos proved to have a sharp eye for the transience of the modern, and the foresight and technical ability to capture it, finding beauty in the open girder work of rural bridges and uncanny precision in typical bacon-and-eggs breakfasts. His “Diner Series,” focusing on River City, Tastee 29, Surrey House, and Virginia Diners, and the now-vanished Skull and Bones Restaurant on Virginia Commonwealth University’s medical campus, a haunt of medical students for decades, captures not only the restaurant buildings themselves but the staff, interior décor and fixtures, menus, and food. Similarly, … Read the rest

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Richard E. Prince Jr. Railway Photograph Collection

C1: 103
mid-20th century
approx. 1,600 3.5 x 5 inch negatives, approx. 450 “116” (2 x 4 inch) negatives, 49 5 x 7 inch silver emulsion glass-plate negatives 

C1:103 Richard E. Prince Jr. Railway Photograph Collection

A native of Norfolk, Virginia, mechanical engineer Richard E. Prince Jr. (1920–2002) was an authority on the cultural, historical, and technical dimensions of the American railway, publishing extensively on the subject in the 1960s and 1970s. Almost all of the film negatives in our collection were created by Prince, while the glass plates were created by E. F. Horn, who worked at the South Louisville yards of the Louisville-Nashville line. The original negative envelopes, which have been preserved, are inscribed with various technical designations and codes that may be understood by railway aficionados but will mean little to the layperson. Prince also includes notes on the photographs’ location, date, history, and subject. The vast majority of these black-and-white photos are of steam locomotives, with occasional images of diesel engines, yard scenes, railcars, and cabooses. 

Arrangement and access:
The collection is arranged in three series. Series A represents numerical index 1 through 642, and are arranged in order of engine number, lowest to highest, subcategorized under the proper name of each railroad line. Almost all images in Series A predate 1940. Series B is similarly arranged, containing approximately 1,600 images dated between 1937 and 1948, and contains copy film of … Read the rest

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Petersburg Federal Reformatory Album

C1: 087
1 album, 16 x 11 inches, 111 pages, 310 photographs, typed narrative
1948 

C1:087 Petersburg Federal Reformatory Album

More than a picture album, this carefully composed narrative history of the Petersburg Federal Reformatory (now the low-security Federal Corrections Institute outside Hopewell, Virginia) describes and photographically documents the institution’s first eighteen years. Founded in 1930 as a makeshift camp on former farm properties along the Appomattox, the reformatory quickly achieved “an atmosphere of permanency” through the efforts of a relatively small inmate population the narrative characterizes as enthusiastic, industrious, and dignified. 

C1:087 Petersburg Federal Reformatory Album

Indeed, with its stately administrative building and quadrangle of formal hedges, the reformatory, in these photos, looks more like an English country estate than a Depression-era prison. According to the narrative, the inmates took great pride in beautifying the reformatory, which they essentially built from the ground up with local materials and resources, including dogwood, mimosa, redbud, and rambler roses. An ornamental fish pond was even created by flooding the cellar of a vanished farmhouse. A beautiful Arts and Crafts house, built by inmates for the warden, featured a fireplace of petrified wood.  The reformatory was from its earliest days almost completely self-sustaining, with vast fields of alfalfa, squash, and potatoes; horse and mule barns; a dairy herd and modern milking machines; a piggery and slaughterhouse; a cinderblock-making facility; a power plant; and even its own fire station … Read the rest

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