Harry F. Byrd, Sr.

The official gubernatorial portrait of Harry F. Byrd, governor of Virginia from 1926 to 1930. This portrait was painted in 1953, during Byrd's service in the United States Senate but well after he had left the governor's mansion. Byrd was still a young man at the end of his governorship, and was appointed to the United States Senate three years later, in 1933, to serve out the term begun by Claude Swanson. Throughout his career, he leveraged the power of a statewide political organization that bore his name—the Byrd Organization—to make a lasting mark on Virginia and Virginia politics.