Scope and Content: The Massachusetts General Court, per Resolves 1901, c 91 (appropriation approved per St 1901, c 532), authorized the expenditure of up to one thousand dollars by the state treasurer to obtain portraits of all treasurers who served the Commonwealth from 1780 to 1899, to be hung in the his offices. Funds still unspent at the end of that session reverted to the Treasury per RL 1902, c 6, s 31; a second appropriation (St 1903, c 204) replaced the funds needed to complete the project, as contained in this series. –The treasurer contracted with the Notman Photographic Co. to complete photographic reproductions of existing painted portraits, silhouettes, daguerreotypes, photographs, or other images of past treasurers and began correspondence with these treasurers or their descendants, historical societies, and museums in an effort to locate such images.  The Boston Evening Transcript, Feb. 15, 1902, published an article on this effort, after which the treasurer requested similar articles from other newspapers, including the New Bedford Standard and the New Bedford Mercury.  (Treasury correspondence from the project is in:  Massachusetts. Treasury Dept. General outgoing correspondence, 1830-1915 ((M-Ar)18X); copies are included with the present series.) –As original images were located, they were photographed by Notman as enlarged platinum prints in uniform size, embellished with India ink and watercolor by artist James Louis Weston, and mounted in identical frames.  Apparently only twenty-six of the thirty-two portraits authorized were actually produced (four are missing) because of an inability to locate original images.  Two additional treasurer portraits produced by Notman  to similar specifications but not authorized by the original legislation are of Edward S. Bradford, 1900-1905, under whose direction the collection was completed, and Frederick Mansfield, 1914-1915.
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