Each year, the Charleston Renaissance Gallery sponsors a series of carefully curated exhibitions showcasing Southern masterworks from our holdings, as well as recent pieces by select contemporary artists.
An Even Dozen
Twelve Southern Masterworks for 2012
To celebrate 2012, we’ve selected an even dozen paintings by such artists as George Henry Andrews, John James Audubon, Elliott Daingerfield, William Gerard De Brahm, Elizabeth Boott Duveneck , Stephen James Ferris, Everett B. D. Julio, Rockwell Kent, Paul Sawyier, Henry Merwin Shrady, William Posey Silva and Joseph B. Smith to mark the occasion. From allegory to genre scene, seascape to sculpture, each work showcased in this virtual exhibition signifies an artistic apex worthy of fresh consideration.
Elizabeth Boott’s Brahmin background afforded her study with prestigious teachers on both sides of the Atlantic, including William Morris Hunt in Boston, Thomas Couture outside Paris, and her future husband Frank Duveneck in Munich. At the height of her career, she regularly exhibited landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and figure paintings at the Boston Art Club and the National Academy of Design, earning critical acclaim.
In terms of subject matter and execution, A Southern Ox Cart reflects the Barbizon influence on Mrs. Duveneck's work. The painterly technique and palette of somber browns, grays, and greens demonstrate her concern for the suggestive qualities usually associated with studies rather than finished works. The poetic style aligns her with the more progressive artists of her day, making her early death in 1886 all the more lamentable.
Old Dominion
Virginian Visions
In recognition of their loyalty to his rule during the colonial period, King Charles II regularly referred to Virginians as “the best of his distant children.” To that end, in the mid-1600s, the monarch bestowed an elevated status upon his oldest and most favored American settlement, that of “dominion,” the same honorific granted to England, Scotland, Ireland and France. Since that time, the “Old Dominion” has played a pivotal role in this country’s history and heritage. From Jamestown to Williamsburg, from Hampton Roads to Manassas, the once vast province has been the backdrop for seminal events of national consequence, the home place of larger than life leaders. The “mother of statesmen” and presidents alike has also been the inspiration for countless artists’ imaginations, a selection of whom are featured in our latest exhibition. The commonwealth’s varied beauty—stretching from the Blue Ridge to the Chesapeake Bay—and its storied scenes and citizens find their rightful places in this selection of Virginian visions.
Southern Season
From his vantage point at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson observed the Virginian seasons in all their variation and vibrancy. From September through May each year, the great statesman often went out into his woods to hunt the wildlife that ran freely through the countryside. While never as passionate a hunter as the new nation's first president, Jefferson, like so many of his fellow Southern gentleman, considered the sport as fine an outdoor pursuit as any. Writing to a young nephew in 1785, he offered this endorsement of the pastime: "I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your walks."
Southern Sesquicentennial
Enduring Images of the Civil War
On April 12, 1861, incendiary political problems—states’ rights, slavery and secession—brought a band of Confederate forces to the federal fortress of Fort Sumter in Charleston’s harbor, where they launched the opening salvo of the War Between the States. For the next four years, the country would be torn apart from within, testing the republic’s very foundation and future. One hundred and fifty years later, many of the issues “at the heart of the Civil War remain relevant: equality for all Americans, the appropriate reach of the federal government and the effort to reconcile differing cultural values under a single national flag.”
The “Great Unpleasantness” occupied artists’ imaginations and canvases from those first moments: historic battles, heroic valor, scarred lands and unprecedented loss of life that “carried mourning to almost every home.” Whether informed by political sympathy, regional fidelity, economic savvy or aesthetic appeal, the works offered here are representative of the postbellum artistic response to both the honor and horror of what General Robert E. Lee described as "a terrible ordeal [and] necessary expiation, perhaps, for our national sins.” Perhaps, each in his own turn and singular style, these artists were in mind of President Abraham Lincoln’s 1865 inaugural admonition, the call to all Americans to “strive to bind up the nation’s wounds … and do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Charleston Calling
On the eve of Charleston’s twentieth century cultural rebirth, one visiting artist-correspondent sang her high praises to a national audience: “Her moods are infinite; and, as you press on, you are thrilled with a sense of the endless variety and superabundance of beauty that lures you in a zigzag course across the city, fearful that something might escape you.” Other writers—both “from off” and native born—described the city with equal ardor, deeming it “a God-made garden, a paradise where man walks reverently,” a place “so unlike the typical modern American city that to the traveler it must be a bit of the old world.” Today, the charm endures, as do the images created by many of the South’s leading artists. From Thomas Sully and Thomas Wightman to William Halsey and Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, colonial portraiture to modernism and still life to landscape, our latest exhibition celebrates the quintessential art and artists of Charleston, spanning some 240 years. Many of the featured works will also be showcased at the upcoming Charleston International Antiques Show, scheduled for March 18-20. As it did in the early 1920s, Charleston can still “claim honors as an art center in America,” a mecca where artistic pilgrims go “to worship at the shrine of spring.”
Southern Sisters
Opening Reception
Friday, November 5, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
For the women artists featured in our upcoming exhibition, the ideal room of one’s own held an easel or sketchbook—as well as the promise of time and space to create freely. With careers spanning the last 150 years, these women balanced home and hearth with palette and brush, and, in many cases, helped pioneer professional paths for the fairer sex. In the hallowed halls of academic proving grounds and at leading galleries of the day, this select sorority—including Emma Lambert Cooper, Clara Davidson (Woman with Poinsettias, above), Elizabeth Boott Duveneck, Lena Gurr, Marie Atkinson Hull, Anna V. H. Huntington, Nell Choate Jones, Augusta Denk Oelschig, Hattie Saussy, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Mary Russell Smith, Alice Barber Stephens, Anna Heyward Taylor, Martha Walter and Ludmilla Pilat Welch —lived out Georgia O’Keeffe’s belief that “to create one’s own world in any of the arts takes courage.”
Southern Scribe
Works by Anna Heyward Taylor
Our latest exhibition celebrates the recent publication of Selected Letters of Anna Heyward Taylor, edited by Edmund Taylor and Alex Moore. Published by the University of South Carolina Press, this heavily illustrated volume chronicles the globe-spanning travels and aesthetic development of one of the state’s most accomplished artists. A pivotal force in the Charleston Renaissance, Anna Heyward Taylor lived a life of adventure and art, and faithfully shared her stories through prolific and highly detailed correspondence to friends, family, and colleagues.
Southern Seas
August 12 - October 15, 2010
“Water,” wrote Leonardo da Vinci, “is the driver of Nature.” And, since time in memoriam, man has sought to drive water—to master its rhythms, harness its force, plunder its riches, absorb its lessons. In humble craft and mighty vessel alike, for purposes noble and national, common and commercial, man’s search for sovereignty on the sea has taken myriad forms and provided endless inspiration for artists through the ages. Robert Henri asked and answered, "Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think."
Gulf Coast Unspoiled
Joseph Rusling Meeker (1827-1889)
Bayou, 1884
Oil on canvas,27 x 22 inches
Signed lower left: JR Meeker 84
Down Gulf Coast way, there is a bridge over the Mobile River and the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, two parallel spans of coreten steel on concrete pilings anchored in the river and swamp below. Though it lacks the drama of some, this viaduct is, all the same, as pretty as any in America, lifting in natural harmony from the watershed that feeds the city and offering spectacular views to both the left and right. I pay attention when on this bridge, drinking in the changing scene by season, in weather, over time. I have risen early to watch the break of morn on the delta and have likewise cut short a day's travel in hopes of catching the last light of an afternoon from the bridge’s loft.
This is a landscape I know and love, a landscape now threatened by man and malfunction. Even today, I see the land the artists saw—minus booms and tar balls—and because I know their work, I know the land as they knew it. This, for me, is profound. As I drive west, I am in search of Meeker's
This is the story of Southern, in pictures.
The Color of Surface: Recent Paintings by Linda Fantuzzo
May 7 - June 19, 2010
A stunning selection of new works by
Southern Semblance
March 4 - April 5, 2010
"Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor—all must combine to realize a character,” wrote Charles Baudelaire. Across continents and centuries, the axiom has been borne out, in every medium and mode. Our latest virtual exhibition, Southern Semblance, features thirty likenesses that, en masse, offer a survey of the regional form. In the antebellum South, portraiture was a mark of social status, critical to the decorum and decoration of the distinguished home. To that end, Swiss-born Jeremiah Theus, based in Charleston, maintained a thriving colonial studio, recording the visages of the wealthy and powerful (Portrait of John Habersham, 1772, above). By contrast, present-day realist Clint Herring captures body and soul in Study for Attitude, a 2005 watercolor of an anonymous young child posed against a wall of distressed clapboard. The extremes beg the timeless question. Is a portrait a portrait of the sitter or the artist?
Southern Specimens
The Art & Science of John Abbot
February 4 - March 4, 2010
An introspective man whose thoughts were "ingrossed [sic] by natural history," John Abbot was one of the first and most prolific artist-naturalists to work in America and in the South. Born to privilege in London, Abbot was fascinated early on by insect specimens. Encouraged in his increasingly consuming passion and formally trained in drawing, he arrived in this country in 1773, ultimately settling near Savannah where he remained for five decades. It was there that Abbot began the work on which his fame rests: the recording of the birds, insects, and plants of Georgia in meticulous sketches numbering in the thousands.
Southern Lens
Works by Bayard Wootten
January 6 - February 4, 2010
One of the South's leading photographers of the early twentieth century, Bayard Wootten created a highly selective body of work ranging from evocative nature studies and botanicals, to haunting images of rural laborers and Appalachian mountaineers. Originally trained as a painter, Wootten worked in photography's pictorial tradition, emphasizing artistry in her images at a time when documentary and straight photography increasingly dominated the medium.
Born to a cultured North Carolina family, Wootten first visited Charleston around 1932 as part of a photographic tour of Southeastern gardens. Some of the images included in this exhibition first appeared in Charleston: Azaleas and Old Bricks, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1937. Accompanied by text by historian Samuel Gaillard Stoney, reproductions in the book were by photogravure. Wootten considered it her crowning achievement. "This is my great adventure," she declared. "In a way, it is for me the fruition of my long career as a photographer."
Southern Icon
Works by Elizabeth O'Neill Verner
October 9 - November 1, 2009
Thirty years after her death at the age of ninety-six, Elizabeth O’Neill Verner’s legacy as the matriarch of the Charleston Renaissance remains unrivalled. In pastels and etchings, Verner created images that have come to be viewed as the quintessential aesthetic definition of picturesque Charleston and the Carolina Lowcountry. "From my earliest days, the beauty of Charleston has been a conscious blessing," Verner acknowledged. "I owe my native city incalculably much." In the words of one contemporary critic, "Charleston belongs to Mrs. Verner."
The daughter of a rice broker, Verner began drawing as a child. She studied locally before spending two years under Thomas Anshutz's tutelage at the
Along with Alice Smith, Anna Heyward Taylor, and Alfred Hutty, Elizabeth O’Neill Verner played a pivotal role in
Southern Moss
November 6 - December 31, 2009
"I entered through rows of old live oaks, their branches and twigs hung with a delicate fringe of gray moss, and their dark shining green foilage, meeting and intermingling naturally but densely overhead. The light streamed through and played aslant the lustrous leaves, fluttering, pendulous moss; the arch was low and broad; the trunks were huge and gnarled. I stopped my horse and I held my breath; for I have hardly in my all my life seen anything so impressively grand and beautiful." Frederick Law Olmstead, 1856
Featuring works by Howard Chandler Christy, Horace Day, Linda Fantuzzo, G. Howard Hilder, Joseph Rusling Meeker, Andrew Melrose, Thomas Addison Richards, William Posey Silva, Anna Heyward Tayor, Walter W. Thompson (The Black Pool, Charleston South Carolina, above), Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, Ludmilla Pilat Welch, Bayard Wootten, and George Hand Wright, Southern Moss will be on view online and on Church Street from November 6 through December 31, 2009.
Southern Block
Prints by Anna Heyward Taylor
September 10 - October 9, 2009
One of the pivotal figures of the Charleston Renaissance, Anna Heyward Taylor is best known for her woodblock prints, executed both in brilliant color and dramatic black-and-white. Born to a distinguished
Southern Heights
August 7 - September 9, 2009
Generations of Southerners—heat-weary vacationers and artists alike—have sought relief from sweltering summer days in the cooler climes and verdant greens of mountain heights. As early as the 1880s, native Charlestonian William Aiken Walker discovered the pleasures of such retreats, regularly spending warmer months in
Southern Taste
July 10 - August 6, 2009
"Within the South itself, no other form of cultural expression, not even music, is as distinctively characteristic of the region as the spreading of a feast of native food and drink before a gathering of kin and friends," to invoke the claim of one Southern food critic. And, certainly, the melding of cuisine and culture is nothing new to Charleston. On Friday, July 17, the Charleston Fine Art Dealers’ Association will once again sponsor the Palette and Palate Stroll, an evening dedicated to fine art, food, and wine. We will be delighted to welcome the chefs from High Cotton to our kitchen--and connoisseurs of fine culinary and visual arts to our tasting room. For more information on Palette & Palate tickets, please visit the CFADA website or contact us.
Southern Taste showcases a selection of appetizing views, including works by Wayman Adams, Edmund Marion Ashe (Pot of Tea and Ice Cream, above), George Biddle, Tarleton Blackwell, John George Brown, Hal Morrison, Karl Oberteuffer, William Aiken Walker, Andrew John Henry Way, and Thomas Wightman.
Southern Contemporary
June 8 - July 9, 2009
There’s nothing old about the new South—or its art. Today’s Southern art finds its vision and verve in the aesthetic genius of a select few, a handful of whom we are honored to represent. Whether they offer modern interpretations of classic subjects or craft artisan treasures, their works reflect what is both constant and current in the story of Southern. Proving our point in this exhibition: Tarleton Blackwell, Don Cooper, Terry DeLapp, Bill Dunlap, Linda Fantuzzo, Jonathan Green, Clint Herring, Carole Hetzel, Phillip Moulthrop, Dan Ostermiller, and Stephen Scott Young.
Southern Economy:
Images of Life and Labor
May 1 - June 7, 2009
From its agrarian past to post-modern present—through slavery, reconstruction, industrialization, and globalization—the South is a place built on hard work. Life and labor have been inextricably intertwined throughout Southern history and, consequentially, in Southern art. Whether in scenes of cotton plantations that flourished on the backs of generations of African American slaves or through compassionate images of black domestics who tended generations of advantaged families, artists have, over the centuries, offered commentary on both the work ethic and ethical implications of the business of Southern.
This collection of works features red clay fields and bustling docks, cotton mills and back alleys, places where artists as varied as George Biddle, Nicolino Calyo, Elliott Daingerfield, Elizabeth Boott Duveneck, Stephen Morgan Etnier, John Kelly Fitzpatrick, Emile Gruppe, Wilson Irvine, Harry Roseland, and William Aiken Walker recorded commercial realities and telling truths about the economy and ethos of the South.
The Heart of Southern:
Twentieth Century Scenes from Charleston Proper
March 12 - April 12, 2009
In the early half of the twentieth century—and especially between the years 1915 and 1940—the city of
Southern Wildlife
February 11 - March 7, 2009
"There is a passion for hunting, something deeply implanted in the human breast,” wrote Charles Dickens. The British tradition of the gentleman’s hunt was one of many cultural mores imported to the American South in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Southern aristocrats explored the natural environs of their new colonies—and then states—usually accompanied by African American guides, as well as carefully bred bird dogs.
Winter Escape:
Southern Impressionism in the Early Twentieth Century
January 5 - February 10, 2009
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Southeast was a magnet for artists seeking winter escape from the cold climes of Chicago, Boston, and New York. While the South had long been an attraction for painters seeking picturesque subject matter, by 1910 impressionism had become the dominant aesthetic in the United States, and the coastal towns of Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans proved ideal destinations. Along with an array of social amenities, these locales offered striking motifs for the plein air landscapist, as Alfred Hutty discovered after arriving in Charleston in 1919. "Come quickly," he famously wired his wife back in New York, "have found heaven." Utilizing a wide range of strategies and techniques, the impressionists created atmospheric images of verdant gardens, bucolic vistas, and quaint city views, capturing the unique character of these historic places and their marshy surroundings.
The impressionists featured in this exhibition include a sampling of the nation's most honored artists of the day, such as Gilbert Gaul, William Posey Silva, Eliot Candee Clark, Anthony Thieme, and John Kelly Fitzpatrick. In addition to eastern seaboard locales, these painters--and the others highlighted from the gallery's holdings--also recorded the coastal scenery around Biloxi and Mobile, as well as streams and woodland settings in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Lush floral landscapes, figurative works, and evocative nature studies from the Carolina Blue Ridge complete the exhibition offerings.
Accompanying Spot: Southern Works on Paper is a comprehensive catalogue with an introductory essay by Dr. Philip L. Brewer. A noted expert on drawings and co-author of Lines of Discovery: 225 Years of American Drawings, Dr. Brewer offers keen insight into the works themselves and to their context in American history. “Through the drawings and watercolors of this collection, artists tell of the last two hundred years of Southern history in distinctly personal ways. Encounters with Native Americans and with the natural world, slavery, King Cotton, a war in which over six hundred thousand Americans died, the poverty of Reconstruction, the awakening of Henry Grady’s New South, agrarianism, civil rights, regionalism, and the late arrival of modernism: all are touched on.”
Copies of the catalogue are available for purchase. For more information on Spot: Southern Works on Paper, please contact us.
Spot: Southern Works on Paper
November 7, 2008 - January 5, 2009
The Charleston Renaissance Gallery is pleased to present Spot: Southern Works on Paper, an exhibition of sixty-four works on paper related to the American South. This exceptional selection ranges from Joshua Shaw’s pioneering 1820 view of Virginia’s famed Natural Bridge to Charles Shannon’s expressive Syncopation Number 1 (circa 1939) to William Dunlap’s contemporary landscape, Waterside—Iris Watch (2004). In both style and subject matter, the showcased works reveal evolving approaches and varied subjects, including topographical and romantic landscapes, figure studies, and genre and city scenes. The exhibition examines classical, realist, impressionist, modernist and post-modernist styles over the course of two centuries, as well as the distinctive mediums of pencil, watercolor, pastels, and gouache on paper.
Edges: Paintings by Linda Fantuzzo
May 17 - June 16, 2008
This selection of twenty-two paintings reveals Linda Fantuzzo's continuing mastery of landscape and still life subjects, rendered with her distinctive approach toward evocative forms, light, color and atmosphere.
Focusing on the concept of edges, Fantuzzo portrays Lowcountry views and structures seen at the edges of places. Several of the paintings show borders of land, sea, and sky in brilliant colors and brushwork. Other landscapes show familiar Charleston landmarks such as the Cooper River Bridge or the imposing ruin of the Rice Mill facade. Paintings of vernacular roadside sites are similiarly transformed by luminscent fogs of color and atmosphere. Even the objects featured in Fantuzzo's still lifes--windows or paintings, for example--serve as edges into the environment.
For Fantuzzo, "the edge is the border at which a surface terminates. Something is lost and something is gained. The edge can be a portal or threshold to the new." These contemporary works reveal how freely the artist takes us into the nuanced and reflective world of her paintings.
Born in 1950 and raised in upstate New York, Fantuzzo sketched and painted from youth. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1968-1973. There, she received formal academic training, as well as an introduction to abstract painting. In 1971 and 1972, Fantuzzo traveled and studied independently in Italy, Spain, and Morocco. The following year, she settled in Charleston, South Carolina, where she still lives.
Fantuzzo has worked prolifically over the past decades, creating paintings, drawings, and prints, and executing major commissions in South Carolina and Ireland. Among notable exhibitions, she has been featured in solo shows at the GIbbes Museum of Art, Greenville County Museum of Art, and Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Museum. Her group exhibitions include 100 Years/100 Artists: Views of the Twentieth Century in South Carolina Art (South Carolina State Museum, 1999); Framing A Vision: Linda Fantuzzo & Manning Williams (Gibbes Museum of Art, 1004): and The Changing Face of Charleston (City Gallery at Waterfront Park, 2007).
Copies of the exhibition catalogue are available for purchase. For more information on Edges: Paintings by Linda Fantuzzo, please contact us.
Brays Island Outdoor and Shooting Exposition
The Charleston Renaissance Gallery will be a featured exhibitor at the seventh annual Brays Island Outdoor and Shooting Exposition. This private three-day event--featuring informative seminars, shooting exercises and social hours--is tailored to sportsmen and nature lovers alike. Held on the pristine grounds of Brays Island Plantation, it promises to be an exciting and enjoyable way to spend a Lowcountry weekend. A detailed schedule of events can be found on our website's Happenings page. Reservations to this exclusive expo are required and must be made in advance through the plantation at exporeservations@braysisland.org.
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