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The centenary celebration of 1876 served to revive interest in America's glorious colonial past. The anniversary
of American independence provided Virginians with a fortuitous opportunity to refashion their history for a national
audience and thereby to revive the state's damaged status. By the turn of the century it had become apparent that
Virginia's advances into the national arena would be compromised if they were always preceded by the figurative
parading of Confederate flags. By reintroducing the heritage of the colonial "Old Dominion," Virginians could
deflect attention away from the recent conflict, bring a degree of closure to that catastrophic era, and
simultaneously recall the moment of the region's greatest influence. "Old Virginia" could be reinvented
as the region's colonial past and thereby reinfused with the spirit of those invigorating times. This was
a past that had a future.
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In Ole Virginny
Unidentified artist
Published in John Esten Cooke, "Virginia in the Revolution," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, June 1876
Wood engraving
Virginia Historical Society
Evidence of the possibility for a shift in the meaning of "Old Virginia" is found as early as the 1870s. Although Americans
had come to associate such figures as a banjo-playing slave with the carefree life style of the region during the antebellum
era, the plantation master and mistress who are shown here visiting their musical slave are clothed in colonial costume. By
juxtaposing the title of his article with the imagery and caption, John Esten Cooke deftly transformed the term Old Virginia
to mean the colonial era.
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Jamestown
Huestis Cook
c. 1890s
Gelatin silver print
Virginia Historical Society
In the 1890s Huestis
Cook reverently photographed the long neglected Jamestown site. In 1907, the 300th anniversary of the settlement,
Thomas Nelson Page wrote of it, "I stood on the deck of a boat anchored on the bosom of the river and gazed on
this Island . . . it became the real Cradle of the American People wherever they may be. . . . This spot belongs to
the continent. The heart of it [the continent] is Old Virginia." He happily added that New England had been carved
from the territory of "North Virginia."
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The Colonial Revival
The revival of interest in the colonial past was expressed in architecture, the decorative arts, preservation, painting, and literature.
It appealed nationally in part because it was a tool that traditionalists could use to mold contemporary society
to the model of elitist, Anglo-Saxon, colonial America. Postwar northerners feared the social changes brought
about by rampant European immigration and burgeoning industrialization. Virginians feared that popular-class
radicals and newly liberated African Americans would change the old social order that the Confederacy had
failed to defend. The Colonial Revival could be used as a bulwark against such potential transformations.
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A Meet in Old Virginia
Thur de Thulstrup
1901
Photogravure
Virginia Historical Society
Because the Gilded Age of the late 19th century was characterized by a nostalgia for an inegalitarian and undemocratic
society, Virginia, which had been more elitist than any of the other American colonies, became a favorite subject for
Colonial Revival writers, artists, and architects. This scene by a New York illustrator is set at Westover, the quintessential
Virginia mansion, where William Byrd III, a horse enthusiast and spendthrift, would have enjoyed such spectacular
rural entertainments. One northern writer, Sydney George Fisher, argued that such sports provided "an education"
that was necessary training for the difficult task of running a Virginia plantation. He imagined "a gay, happy people;
a race of sportsmen, cock-fighters and fox-hunters; bright, humorous, and sociable," and therefore quite different
from the New England Puritans. He dared to suggest that slavery was a virtue because it gave the Virginia gentry
"the habit of command and the desire for ascendancy."
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Robert "King" Carter
Attributed to Marietta Andrews
c. 1900
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society
The colonial figures who reappeared in the early 20th century were often the products of over-ambitious
imaginations. In oil portraits, in novels, and ultimately in films they were pictured romantically, more as the
revivalists wanted them to be than as they actually were. None was more celebrated than Robert Carter,
the aggressive land agent who amassed so great a fortune that in his lifetime he earned a royal sobriquet,
"King." Edith Sale considered him to be "one of the most picturesque and commanding figures of the country."
She accepted as authentic this large painting that reputedly was copied from a now-lost life portrait but was
almost certainly a modern creation. She described the figure as "strikingly handsome": "The firm mouth
shows lines of pity next to curves of scorn, and the beautiful, tapering hand . . . could only have been
used for the most delicate of tasks."
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George Washington at Mount Vernon, on His Way South to Yorktown in 1781
Stanley Arthurs
c. 1925
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society, Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art
Predictably, the campaign that led to the defeat of the British army at Yorktown was a subject of great interest to
Colonial Revival artists. Stanley Arthurs, a Wilmington, Delaware illustrator, imagined an affecting moment during
Washington's return to his home state in 1781. The general stopped for two days at Mount Vernon, which he had
not seen in more than six years. He then set out for Yorktown — in his words, "almost all impatience and anxiety."
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The Creation of Colonial Williamsburg
Nowhere was the revival of interest in Virginia's colonial past more effectively put to use than at what would
become "Colonial Williamsburg." The goal of the restorers of the town was to recreate in Williamsburg the setting
where American ideas about liberty had been formulated and debated. It was believed that visitors to so unique
an environment would rediscover the values of the Founders, which would be worth reconsideration in post-World
War I America. To turn back the clock, however, would be no easy task.
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Old Bruton Is . . . a National Shrine
c. 1905
Poster
Virginia Historical Society
William Archer Rutherfoord Goodwin, the man who would transform Williamsburg into a showplace of the
Colonial Revival, assumed the rectorship at Bruton Parish Church in 1903. He had relocated to Williamsburg
on the condition that the interior of the church be returned to its colonial form, and he went quickly to work to
restore this "National Shrine." To Goodwin's thinking, Bruton Parish should serve to inspire not only religious
sentiment but also patriotism. This poster, which solicits contributions, is evidence of the new enthusiasm for
Old Virginia's early past.
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The Governor's Palace
Frances Benjamin Johnston
c. 1935
Photograph
Virginia Historical Society
Given the early date of the fire that destroyed the Governor's Palace in 1781, the design of the rebuilt structure
was based upon scant historical evidence. The interest of the patron, John D. Rockefeller, in historical accuracy
led to the discovery in 1929 of an 18th-century print that pictured the front of the building. The garden facade,
however, had to be imagined. The rebuilt Palace immediately became the centerpiece of the Williamsburg
restoration. The existence of so grand a building contributed significantly to the mystique of early Virginia.
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New Virginia
While many writers in late 19th-century Virginia had turned their attentions toward the past, more
forward-thinking leaders had recognized the region's potential for growth and development. What was
called the Progressive Movement spurred the creation of a more industrialized economy, which led to
a more urbanized population. A New Virginia emerged; the state was still predominantly agricultural, but
it achieved a greatly expanded industrial base. The hope was that the region would not only recover from
defeat but would prosper and ultimately regain her national stature, now as part of a New South.
In the light of this apparent threat, the lost rural society of Old Virginia and the ideal of blissful pastoral
living seemed all the more poignant and appealing. Ironically, progressivism, which had much to do with the
decline of the historical Old Virginia before the Civil War, actually contributed to the rise of the mythological
Old Virginia in the years after it.
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Panorama of Norfolk, Va. and Surroundings, 1892, Compliments of Myers & Company, Real Estate
American Publishing Company (Milwaukee)
1892
Lithograph
Virginia Historical Society
The new industrialization and urbanization in late 19th-century Virginia were first played out in the established cities
of Richmond and Norfolk. Norfolk's growth had been meteoric in the years following the war. Thus, at the anniversary
of Columbus's voyage, the state's premier port was chosen to be the site for an international naval review to be held
the following year in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair. The expansion of Norfolk and the concurrent idea
that a progressive New Virginia had emerged were both boldly projected in this lithograph, which was published
by a local real estate company on the occasion of the naval review.
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Virginia
Paramount Pictures
Poster
1941
Virginia Historical Society
Stereotypical views of the "Old South" were introduced in Gone with the Wind and the novels and films that followed in its wake.
The most transparent of the sequels to Gone with the Wind was Virginia. If Gone with the Wind presented lavish
scenes filled with hooped skirts, columned architecture, green fields, failed finances, and faithful black retainers,
then Virginia would do the same. If Scarlett O'Hara pined for her beloved Ashley yet at the same time was attracted
to Rhett Butler, Charlotte Dunterry would enter into a loveless marriage with the wealthy northerner Norman Williams, while she
longs for an impoverished local aristocrat, Stonewall Elliot. One of the black actors in this film, Leigh Whipper, who
portrays an elderly former slave who returns to the plantation to die, apparently gave the most memorable performance.
One critic wrote of Whipper that "he doesn't sing 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,' but one can hear it anyway."
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The Recovery of the Pastoral Ideal
In the wake of the Colonial Revival, new generations of gentry carried the idea of a reborn Old Virginia
to the countryside. Following the tradition of the region, wealthy Americans sought out rural estates where
a genteel, virtuous life could be pursued. Like the rebuilders of Williamsburg, who strove to recover not only
the old buildings but also the environment that had inspired Virginia's Founding Fathers to greatness, these
modern lords of the manor took inspiration from the knowledge that their colonial predecessors had moved
on the same stage for many of the same reasons. The pastoral lifestyle, with its intertwining of great wealth,
humanism, historical consciousness, and the pursuit of virtue, was a worthy goal. In their reimagining of
the plantation—now styled one's "country place" or "farm"—these new ruralists would establish a pattern
for gentry living that exists to this day.
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Virginia Scene
Richard Norris Brooke
c. 1900
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society, Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art
In Richard Norris Brooke's landscape, powerful forces have nearly obliterated man's efforts to level and fence
a field. The land is pictured as returning to its primeval innocence. At the turn of the century, the landscape of
the Tidewater and Piedmont provided for its tenants and visitors what appeared to be the setting for a new
beginning. Inspired by the Colonial Revival, which redirected attention to the untenanted landscape, new
generations of the gentry, led by such figures as Alexander Weddell and Paul Mellon, would flock to the
countryside. For the next hundred years they would perpetuate there the tradition of their predecessors,
the Virginian's pursuit of pastoral virtue.
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Alexander Weddell and Paul Mellon personified in their respective eras what could be achieved
in Virginia when men of means seek refuge on the land.
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Alexander Wilbourne Weddell
Philip De Laszlo
1937
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society
A highly visible player in the recovery of Virginia's colonial legacy and a social force in Richmond, Washington, D.C.,
and international circles, Alexander Weddell was ever conscious of Virginia's heritage. Putting aside his family's
strong ties to the Confederacy, Weddell first pursued a diplomatic career. He then retired to a life of civic interests,
during which he helped Virginians to rediscover that early portion of their past—the late 16th and17th centuries—that
he believed held greater significance than did the Confederate legacy.
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Virginia House, built west of Richmond in Henrico County (now Richmond)
1926–28
Photograph in Alexander Weddell, A Description of Virginia House (Richmond, 1947)
Virginia Historical Society
In the most extreme case imaginable of the importation of the accouterments of culture, Alexander Weddell chose to
import not simply the small decorative objects that would have provided reminiscences of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean lifestyle, but an actual English mansion. While other colonial revivalists restored old Virginia houses
of the 18th century or built anew in the Georgian style, Weddell did them one better by reconstructing an
ancient English manor house that he had disassembled and shipped across the ocean. The architecture of
Warwick Priory harkens back to the Elizabethan age when the first voyages to Virginia were undertaken.
By building in this manner, Weddell could celebrate the antiquity of a colony so old that it had been named
for the virgin queen. [More about Virginia House]
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Paul Mellon
Bernard Hailstone
1970
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society
Resident as early as 1935 in a part of Northern Virginia that
has a rich colonial past, Paul Mellon built at his Rokeby Farm an appropriate colonial mansion, which he called
the Brick House. He said that he reserved the nearby paddocks and fields
for horses in order to "have the pleasure of seeing them from the house or when we go for a walk." In the Virginia
countryside, the lives of Mellon and his wife and children came to resemble those of the Georgian gentry who are
pictured in English paintings that a decade later Mellon would begin to collect. He set for himself the lofty goal of
contributing to the continuation of the agrarian culture. Not only would Mellon live like the rural gentry of olden times;
he would also salvage representations of the pastoral lifestyle of Georgian England to save those images for posterity.
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A True Relation
John Smith
London, 1608
Virginia Historical Society, bequest of Paul Mellon
In his enthusiasm for the people and events of Virginia's illustrious past, Mellon in 1958 began to purchase manuscripts
and rare books related to the colonial history of the region. Soon he was the greatest private collector ever of Virginiana,
which filled the library of his rural retreat, and much of which he bequeathed to the Virginia Historical Society. These
objects helped Mellon to appreciate the historical heritage that was tied to the landscape that surrounded him.
[More about Paul Mellon's collection]
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Paul Mellon and his generation saw that both the landscape and the past (which in Virginia is tied
to the landscape) can influence the quality of life. Preservation is essential, Mellon argued, "if we care at all about
the sort of world our children and grandchildren will inherit." Thus in 1993, he and many of his neighbors rose to the
challenge of the Walt Disney Company to place an American history theme park in northern Virginia. So powerful was the
opposition that Disney was forced to scuttle the proposal. To celebrate, the victors published a book, Hallowed Ground
(1996), which records the extraordinary beauty of the Old Virginia Piedmont. The hope is that such houses and such
vistas as are pictured therein will continue to be preserved as greater numbers of modern ruralists turn their attentions
toward the land and the way of life that it nurtures.
The Legacy of Old Virginia
This exhibition asks the viewer to see the totality of Virginia's history, both the high aspirations
of the colonial aristocrats that led to the triumph of independence, as well as the troubling history
of race relations in the colony and commonwealth that was their concurrent legacy. It attempts to
demystify the mytho-historic past that is associated with the term "Old Virginia," so that the
viewer can come to better understand the strong feelings, whether of nostalgia or revulsion, that
are often the result of reconsiderations of the state's long history.
The term "Old Virginia" is a relic of the past, retired from usage because it is too much
associated with the antebellum slave era. But the idea of Old Virginia continues to survive and
alternately to be construed as the basis for the state's either positive or problematic heritage.
While the troubling aspects of Virginia's history will always be with us, recollections of our past
necessarily include the ideal of rural virtue. Worthy attributes such as honor, integrity, gentility,
and the ability to lead were born under the "vines and fig trees" of plantation-era Virginia. The
visions of many of the patriots at the forefront of the move toward independence and the thinkers
who conceived of the enlightened form of government that we all enjoy today were products of
the pastoral landscapes of what would come to be called Old Virginia. The Piedmont
philosophers were driven not only by a political dream but also by a social vision to perpetuate
their agrarian society, which they saw as the antithesis of the corrupt urban settings of 18th-
century Europe and the growing cities of the northern colonies; their pastoral ideal survives with
the new ruralists of the 21st century.
Introduction
I. Origins of the Pastoral
II. Pursuit of Gentility
III. Decline and Resistance
IV. Resurgence of the Old Order
V. Triumph of the Colonial Past
Exhibit Catalog
Acknowledgements
Comments
Image rights owned by the Virginia Historical Society. Do not use without permission.
Rights and reproductions
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