HILLSBOROUGH: Echo Chen’s portrait of 1830s governor Vroom is unveiled

Echo Chen needed only a little more than a week to complete the portrait of 19th-century state governor Gov. Peter D. Vroom that is the latest in the township’s gallery of notable residents.
Echo, a senior at Hillsborough High School, drew wide applause Friday night when her rendering of the newest addition to the burgeoning collection was unveiled at the opening–night reception of Hillsborough’s Fine Art & Photography Exhibit.
The show, which was up from Friday to Sunday, March 11-13, at the Municipal Building, drew about 300 works of art in five categories for adults and high schoolers in Somerset, Hunterdon and Mercer counties.
Echo has been a student at Kevin Murphy’s Art Academy of Hillsborough since she was 12. Mr. Murphy, who contributed the first portrait of Peter J. Biondi to begin the gallery collection in 2009, said Friday he saw the potential in Echo immediately.
“There was something special about her,” said Mr. Murphy, who worked with Echo in the last year. “She was able to grasp things very quickly and I saw her potential immediately.”
To be chosen for Mr. Murphy’s tutelage and the opportunity to paint the gallery portrait, Echo competed about a year ago against about 12 students in a still-life drawing competition judged by professionals.
The chosen artist gets the year of art education for free, plus a $1,000 commission, compliments of Armadillo Arts and Crafts and owner Steve Linton.
“The idea that you can generate this quality of art with high school-aged students is amazing,” said Mr. Murphy.
The thought of a portrait of Gov. Vroom “was on our radar for a while,” said Mr. Murphy, whose took on the task of traveling to the statehouse in Trenton to photograph the former governor’s portrait in the first-floor rotunda.
Working from someone else’s portrait, instead of having the person in front of her, was the most difficult constraint in painting the portrait, Echo said.
Gov. Vroom (1791-1873) was born in Hillsborough and served as the governor of New Jersey on two occasions (November 1829–October 1832 and October 1833–November 1836). He was also a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for a single term, from 1839–1841.
In addition to Mr. Biondi, also in the collection are opera singer Anna Case Mackay, philanthropist Doris Duke, Olympic track athlete Joetta Clark Diggs and pro football player Shaun O’Hara. 