Paintings of St. Paul's Episcopal Church (Haymarket, VA)
For my paintings of local landmarks and landscapes, I wanted to focus on some of the prominent landmarks in Haymarket, Virginia. One of these is the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. This building was built in 1801 as a district courthouse and went through a few different hands before being given to the Episcopal Church in 1830.
The church is located in the heart of Haymarket, but is on a side street and is easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. Living in the Haymarket area myself, I know the church was there but hadn’t paid it very close attention. Before working on this series of paintings, I visited the church to take pictures and did research on its history. I found a beautiful building with a rich history.
In this first painting, I tried to capture the beauty of the building with a bit of a whimsical touch. I love the rich red brick contrasted with the green trees and shrubs.
Though the building was first used as a courthouse, it was only a courthouse from 1803 to 1809. The General Assembly ordered the building to be sold in 1807 and it was then bought by the Hygeia Academy. In 1822, it was resold to William Skinker, Jr. (the nephew of the founder of Haymarket). William Skinker, Jr. gave the church to the Episcopal Church in 1830 in memory of his wife.
It is now the oldest church still standing in Prince William County.
During the Civil War, the church was used as a hospital for both the First Battle of Bull Run and the Second Battle of Bull Run. It sounds like it was used by the Confederate army as a hospital for the First Battle of Bull Run and the Union army for the Second Battle of Bull Run, but I saw some conflicting information on this so I’m not certain.
The church managed to escape being burned down during the Civil War when Union troops burned down most of the town. Union troops did use the church as a stable for calvary horses and they burned the inside of the building when they left. But the outside of the building remained standing and the church was rebuilt after the war.
For my other two paintings of the church, I started with an ink sketch and then painted with watercolor. I really like the texture of the red brick and tried to capture it using both the natural texture of watercolor blooms and wet on wet with different reds and also by highlighting a few bricks here and there. It wasn’t necessary to paint each and every brick, but to give a suggestion of the brick texture. I enjoyed working on the details of the graceful steeple and the foliage framing the church.
While I was doing research on the history of the church, I came across a PDF scan of the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Parish Records. This document included some introductory information from 1930 and 1984 that gave more history than I had found elsewhere. It’s an interesting read if you would like to learn more about the church. You can also see more information and pictures of the church at the Town of Haymarket’s website.
Learn more about the other landscape paintings in this collection: