An original oil portrait of late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor will soon hang in Augusta’s courthouse a decade after it was saved from the trash.
The portrait was likely painted around 1981, the year O’Connor became the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, according to the Kennebec Journal. A conservative, O’Connor held the role until retiring in 2006. She died in December 2023.
The state accepted the portrait on Friday from Gardiner real estate developer Kevin Mattson, whose company office had it on the wall for years until realizing it was an original, and possibly official, painting, he told the Kennebec Journal.
One of Mattson’s colleagues found the portrait at the Yarmouth transfer station, though its path there is a mystery. Mattson believes someone upset with an O’Connor ruling discarded the painting, while others speculate it was stolen and could not be sold, according to the Kennebec Journal.
O’Connor’s likeness will hang in a judges’ conference room at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s chief justice, Valerie Stanfill, told the newspaper.
