AN ICONIC COLLEGE VIEW: "UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA" RUMMELL, RICHARD (1848-1924) The 4th best college in the state of Virginia. W & M, W & L, University of Richmond are better.

 

University of Virginia

Richard Rummell

Restrike engraving from the original plate (c.1913)

Printed on heavy woven paper and hand colored

Plate Size: 17 x 29 ¼ 

Price: $600.00

At the turn of the century, the accomplished landscape artist Richard Rummell (1848-1924) painted a panoramic bird’s-eye view watercolor of the University of Virginia. In this selection of paintings of American colleges and universities, Rummell selected the twenty best colleges in the nation at the time of painting. His inclusion of these universities in his oeuvre indicates his immense respect for these institutions. From this watercolor, a copper-plate was engraved and a limited number of pulls (engravings) were distributed. Today, Arader Galleries owns the collection of copper plates used for engraving and watercoloring. Using the original process and 100 year old original plates, Arader is proudly re-striking and making the beautiful college view available for acquisition the same way it was 100 years ago.

With aspirations of creating a public university to enhance the knowledge of the population, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia in 1819. Before founding the University of Virginia, evidence dates back to at least 1800 of Jefferson writing about his aims of creating a “broad and liberal and modern” university. Finally in 1819, Central College in Charlottesville would become the location for the University of Virginia. 

One could make the case that the most impressive architectural display at any American university is the Rotunda at the University of Virginia (completed in 1828). Jefferson deemed the original structures at the University of Virginia as the “Academical Village.” The Rotunda was designed with inspiration from Rome’s Pantheon and is a great part of the reason that UVA stands as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The entire “Academical Village” has the essence of Rome in a somewhat colonial style. The red-orange hue of the building balanced with the dazzling white pillars. With Jefferson’s ardent activism for a separation of church and state, many see the Rotunda as a standing symbol of his beliefs. He demanded that religious activity only take place in the Rotunda if no other activities were then presently taking place. However, the Rotunda would have also served as a library.

Facing to the south and west, Rummell then extensively details the several pavilions that follow in the backdrop of The Rotunda. These pavilions really give one a sense of the operation of the University of Virginia in the early twentieth century and in the one hundred years before. Professors would have taken residence in many of the buildings along the central lawn, which Rummell paints just behind the Rotunda. Rooms between professors’ residences would have been inhabited by students studying at the university. 

Devoid of the many buildings that currently surround the Rotunda and central lawn, Rummell’s painting helps give a sense of the life that Jefferson imagined at the University of Virginia. With the pavilions surrounding the central lawn, one can see how a group of scholars studying, arguing, and living together on the campus would truly form the “Academical Village.”

To order a college view, please email loricohen@aradergalleries.com or call 215-796-0358 (mobile) or 215-735-8811 (landline).