Kenneth Bradley gifted the portrait of himself to TCU in honor of his mother. Photo by Amy Peterson

In 1884, Add-Ran Male and Female College lured Anna D. Bradley from Kentucky to its rural campus in Thorp Spring, Texas, to teach instrumental music. The widow arrived with her child, Kenneth, who eventually studied under his mother at Add-Ran. The college became TCU and found a permanent home in Fort Worth. Kenneth Bradley became founding president of Chicago’s Bush Conservatory of Music. In 1919, painter E. Martin Hennings completed an oil portrait of the piano-teaching president for the conservatory’s art collection. But as an homage to his mother’s pioneering role in TCU’s fine arts education, Kenneth Bradley wanted the portrait given to the university. After his death in 1954, the painting made its way to the Mary Couts Burnett Library, where it now hangs next to a trove of government documents in the Gearhart Reading Room.