Portrait of Margaret Huxtable Townsend (1882 - 1970)

Abstract

This is a painting of Professor Margaret Huxtable Townsend, Rhodes College's first woman professor (1918-1954) and the first Dean of Women (1925-1952). She is seated wearing dark blue regalia with her hands resting in her lap. The painting by Sergei Bongart was done in 1954 and given to the College a year later. Bongart's signature is in the lower left corner. Sergei R. Bongart (1918-1985) was born in the Ukraine and emigrated to the U. S. in 1948 where he lived in California and Idaho.