New Painting in Capitol Profiles Female Trailblazer Senator
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 – She was the first woman to be elected to both the House and Senate, the first woman to get elected to the Senate on her own and the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president at a major party’s convention.
And now, the late Margaret Chase Smith, originally of Skowhegan, Maine will forever watch over the halls of the Capitol.
Amid the gilded pillars and plush-red-carpet-with-stars that decorate the old Senate Chamber, Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe – both wearing red roses in allegiance to their mentor – unveiled Smith’s portrait Tuesday. Smith died in 1995 at the age of 97.
“She did make an extraordinary difference for women as I can tell you from my own personal experience,” Snowe said. “I well remember the sense of awe when I came to Washington D.C. . as a senior in college, sitting across the desk from her. Little did I realize that because of the doors that she opened she would make it possible for me to sit one day at her very desk on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Snowe, who requested in 1999 that the Senate Commission on Art commission a portrait of Smith, said the portrait reflects a woman of “myriad dimensions.” Smith rose from the “most humble of beginnings to the highest corridors of power,” she said.
Added Collins: “For every woman serving in the United States Senate, but part for Olympia Snowe and me, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith blazed the path because she was senator the entire time we were growing up.”
Artist Ronald Frontin, who lives in South Thomaston, Maine, was selected in 2000 from among 30 applicants nationwide to paint the portrait.
In the oil portrait, Smith, wearing a royal blue dress, double-stranded pearls and her famous single red rose, is standing at her desk in the Senate Chambers holding the “Declaration of Conscience,” a 1950 speech in which she criticized Sen. Joe McCarthy, who was carrying out a witch-hunt against citizens and public officials who he alleged were communists.
Frontin used a small black-and-white slide of Smith’s face as the base for the portrait, he said, adding that the picture is really more of a compilation of many different pictures of her.
“There wasn’t one photograph where she was ever in this pose,” Frontin said. “It was sort of a scavenger hunt and then putting it all together.”
Smith’s niece and nephew, staff from the Margaret Chase Smith Library, in Skowhegan , curators and some senators played a role in the painting’s creation.
“It was a bunch of people from all different angles and interests looking at the painting,” he said. “We all put our heads together and tried to get something that we all agreed on.”
Frontin, who has thick salt and pepper, wavy hair, attended the ceremony yesterday with his wife and two young sons. Standing shyly in Khaki pants and black shirt, he was a sharp contrast to the high-powered officials in suits- including Senate Majority and Minority leaders Bill Frist and Harry Reid – gathered around him.
“I get more nervous than anything,” Frontin said about these events. “I’m more comfortable behind the easel than I am in situations like this.”
The painting of Smith is a little dark and Frontin said this was for aesthetic reasons.
“The Senate chamber is yellow and if I painted it with the bright yellow in the background aesthetically it just wasn’t going to work,” he said. “Muting the colors back .pushes her out.”
Earlier this month, Frontin unveiled at the Penobscot County Courthouse his portrait of Former Maine State Supreme Court Justice Paul L. Rudman,. He has also painted a portrait of State Supreme Court Justice Samuel Collins, which hangs in the Knox Country Courthouse, and a portrait of Snowe’s husband, Jack McKernan, the former governor of Maine, for the statehouse.
Smith served in Congress for 32 years from 1940 to 1972. After the 1940 death of her husband, Rep. Clyde Smith, she was elected to fill his seat and served in the House for eight years. In 1948 she ran for the Senate, where she stayed for 24 years. She was the first woman to serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. In 1964 Smith’s name was placed in nomination for president at the Republican convention.
Collins first met Smith when she was a senior in high school and she took part in the Senate Youth program. Collins said she expected a handshake and a photo but ended up talking to Smith for two hours.
“I remember leaving her office feeling so proud that she was my senator and I also remember thinking that girls can grow up to be anything,” Collins said. “What I remember most is her telling me to always stand tall for what I believed in.”
