Artist, teacher, activist, critic, and author Benny Andrews ascended from the humblest of Southern beginnings to the loftiest stages of American art. A native of rural Georgia, Andrews was one of ten children born to sharecropper parents. Though his proper schooling was necessarily sporadic, Andrews and his siblings were encouraged in their ... MORE

A central figure in the Charleston Renaissance, Alfred Hutty was born in Grand Haven, Michigan. He grew up in Kansas City and Leavenworth, Kansas, earning an art scholarship at the age of fifteen. He worked as a stained glass designer in Kansas City and St. Louis, where he attended the St. Louis School of Art. Inspired by the landscape art of ... MORE

This rendering of the steamship Isabel, which had a maritime career from 1848 to 1863, is a highly evocative representation of the maritime history of antebellum South Carolina and the Confederate States of America. Believed to have been painted around the year 1855 by Joseph B. Smith and his artist-son, William S. Smith, this ... MORE

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, William Aiken Walker was a successful itinerant artist who spent much of his life traveling throughout the South creating paintings of rural and urban genre scenes, figures and landscapes. Following a route of major port cities, railroad towns, and resort spots from Baltimore to Charleston to New Orleans, he ... MORE

This serene view of Virginia's Natural Bridge by Jacob Caleb Ward is an important early record of the Southern landmark Thomas Jefferson described as “one of the sublimest curiosities in nature.” Only recently discovered and extensively researched, the painting is one of a pair of panels the artist created ... MORE