William Morgan: The painting of Gov. Raimondo and the banality of official portraiture

The official Rhode Island State House portrait of Gov. Gina Raimondo, by Patricia Watwood

When Gina Raimondo first ran for governor of Rhode Island, she did not trumpet her gilt-edged education at Harvard, Oxford and Yale, which I thought was admirably modest. When I first met her, I was starstruck. Searching for a topic of non-political conversation, I asked her about her Rhodes Scholarship. Like other old Oxonians, we reminisced about our respective colleges there, New and Jesus. Unlike your average politician, Raimondo was both warm and smart. I was snowed.

No governors will remain universally admired, and none will leave office with their reputations untarnished. Yet Rhode Island’s first female top executive has gone on to become the U.S. secretary of commerce. Raimondo is one of the leading lights of President Biden’s brain trust, and one of the cabinet’s most energetic members. 

A snapshot of an unidealized and human Governor Raimondo.

Photo by Will Morgan

Regardless of popularity or accomplishment, all Rhode Island governors, as with governors in other states, are honored by being flash-frozen on the State House walls. With few exceptions, these portraits are sterile and lifeless. The pioneering and dynamic Gina Raimondo deserved a far better tribute than the recently one unveiled by New York figurative artist Patricia Watwood.

The representation here, as so often with official portraits, is wooden and insipid, capturing none of Gina’s spirit. Rather, it looks like a public-relations photo, or perhaps a page from the Talbots catalogue. The pair of flags are beyond trite, fighting for prominence against blue water and a sky with cottony clouds, with the obvious point to remind us that it’s the Ocean State.

Throughout Western art, flowers have been included in portraits for their symbolism, with certain plants alluding to such virtues as innocence, love, constancy and even patriotism. Such allusions might have given the painting a little literary punch. Instead, we have primarily decorative flora, wildflowers that “the residents of Rhode Island would recognize.”

Furthermore, we have Watwood’s unsupportable declaration that she is “celebrating Raimondo’s service and showing  young women, girls, the people of Rhode Island that there is a place in leadership at the highest level for all of us.” Without knowledge that Gina was our first female chief executive, how exactly does this painting demonstrate to anyone the advance for women she represented?

“Imago/Imagination” (2013), by Patricia Watwood

—Courtesy of the artist.

Watwood was selected by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the former governor, and yet the St. Louis native and author of a new book, The Path of Drawing, has far more interesting portraits in her portfolio. (Her own self-portrait, for example, in a realist, neo-Renaissance style, intriguingly features a golden bird, a peacock feather, and bright red flower in her hair.)

Watwood is good at her craft, so why weren’t we given her best? Was the painter overwhelmed by the responsibility of an “official” commission?  Or maybe she felt that little Old Rhode Island, though only a few hours drive from the New York City art world, would not notice a less than stellar effort, even though the state is the home of what is probably America’s most famous art school, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Alas, this is yet another disappointing example of what happens when Rhode Island goes out of state for its image procurement (“Cooler & Warmer,” anyone?). No one would begrudge an artist actually making some money, but this bland depiction hardly seems worth $50,000.

It need not be this way. Providence artist Julie Gearan dispensed with the usual fawning hagiography when she painted Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s State House portrait. Gearan, who teaches painting at RISD, created a haunting image of the enigmatic governor without resorting to the usual political stage props. A challenging work of Romanticism, the Chafee portrait earns high marks for composition, color and impact.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee, by Julie Gearan.

Before readers accuse this writer of being unduly harsh about Ms. Watwood’s picture making, I took the liberty of sharing her Gina Raimondo portrait with Prof. Rod Miller, a conservative art historian at Hendrix College who favors traditional representation. He wrote:

“Wow, you were ripped off. It’s like that woman {Margaret Keane} who painted the Big Eyes portraits. Looks like undergraduate work.’’

William Morgan is a Providence-based architectural historian and critic. His new book, Academia: Collegiate Gothic Architecture in the United States, will be published in October.