Museum of the Shenandoah Valley: Fletcher Painting – Winchester VA  

Description

According to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), Anne Fletcher’s WPA oil painting, “Iris Garden,” was completed in 1939 and placed in the Home Economics Center (or, “Home Economics Cottage”) in Berryville, Virginia.  This building appears to have been part of, or had some relation to Berryville High School.  In 1970, the high school was set for demolition and nearby schools were permitted to take things from the abandoned building that would benefit their own schools.  A principal and two students from Boyce Elementary School took up the offer and transported some items from the high school to their own.  As a reward for his work, one of the students was given the “Iris Garden” painting.

Around 2011, the former student of Boyce Elementary was watching Antiques Roadshow and realized that “Iris Garden” was a WPA painting.  He turned the painting over to GSA and suggested that it be displayed at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Virginia.  And indeed it is exhibited there today (as of September 2023), on loan from the GSA through at least October 2024.

Anne Christine Fletcher (1876-1955) taught at the College of William and Mary and was a well-known and sought-after portrait artist, as well as a prolific artist generally.  Her many portrait paintings included: Queen Anne of Great Britain (for the Chowan County Courthouse, North Carolina); Thomas Jefferson (for Thomas Jefferson High School, Richmond, Virginia); Virginia Supreme Court Justice R.H. Chichester (for the Stafford County Courthouse, Virginia); Benjamin Harrison, fourth governor of Virginia and signer of the Declaration of Independence (for the State Capitol in Richmond); and the children of Kermit and Belle Roosevelt (Kermit was a son of Theodore Roosevelt, cousin to Franklin Roosevelt, and former student of Ms. Fletcher).

In addition to “Iris Garden,” and separate from the portrait work noted above, Anne Fletcher participated in a Virginia state-level WPA program called the “Historic Portrait Project.”  This project was sponsored by the Virginia Conservation Commission, and “Paintings in the group by Miss Fletcher included portraits of: Former Governor Henry Carter Stuart, for the courthouse in Russell County; former Lieutenant Governor B.F. Buchanan, for the courthouse in Smyth County;  John A. Buchanan, former professor at Emory and Henry College, for the Washington County courthouse; former Senator J.N. Harman, for the courthouse in Tazewell County; James S. Greever, late Confederate general, whose portrait will also be hung in the Tazewell County courthouse; and Fayette McMullen, former member of Congress and United States Minister to Siam [Thailand], for the Smyth County courthouse” (The Richmond News Leader, March 11, 1942).