The Charleston renaissance

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1998 by Martha R. Severens

Once called the "Queen of the South," Charleston, South Carolina, languished during the last third of the nineteenth century, devastated by the Civil War and Reconstruction. The South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition of 1901-1902 was one of the attempts to redirect the city's destiny by combining self-promotion and the beautification of Charleston. Although Chamber of Commerce publications celebrated population growth, modern conveniences, and good transportation by land and sea, the exposition did not entice new industry and ultimately ended in debt. Nevertheless, the city leaders learned one important lesson: Charleston's greatest potential lay in attracting visitors by capitalizing on its climate, history, and architectural distinction. The mayor recognized one of the biggest hurdles when he said that "the first step in this direction is to sell Charleston to Charlestonians."(1)

Artists and writers of the 1920s and 1930s contributed both consciously and unconsciously to this endeavor. They engendered pride among Charlestonians and disseminated images of the city to a broad national audience. As visitors came to Charleston and the surrounding Carolina low country, the foundation was laid for a cultural and physical renewal that created the tourist mecca that the city is today.

What is known as the Charleston renaissance, a period between about 1915 and 1940, was inspired by local artists and caused the citizens of Charleston to make use of their greatest assets - what a local newspaper called "beauty, tradition and romance" - to commemorate their past and chart their future.(2)

One of the leading artists in the movement was Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, a descendant of several distinguished families, who considered "poverty the inheritance of the land in which I dwelt."(3) She was largely self-taught, having neither the money nor the inclination to go to art school. She learned from the prints of the Japanese ukiyo-e school, which she studied intensively, absorbing their formats, colors, and reverence for nature. In her woodblock print Mossy Tree (Pl. I) she applied the principles of the Japanese masters to her beloved low country, complete with hanging moss.

Alice Smith's only real mentor was the tonalist painter Lowell Birge Harrison, who spent several winters in Charleston beginning in 1908. He and his wife stayed at the Villa Margherita, a stylish inn near the harbor that was also frequented by Eleanor Roosevelt and the writers Sinclair Lewis and Gertrude Stein. Harrison loved the moonlit views seen from the villa (see Pl. III), but there was no space for a studio. Smith came to the rescue with the offer of one of the old buildings behind her family's house, and the two artists became friends. With Harrison's encouragement Smith indulged her propensity for soft-edged atmospheric landscapes.

In 1917 Smith and her father, D. E. H. Smith (1846-1932), published The Dwelling Houses of Charleston, South Carolina, which was the seminal volume of the Charleston renaissance. Her evocative line drawings of houses and streetscapes and her father's text instilled Charlestonians with pride in their architectural heritage. In 1931 a local newspaper alleged that

More than any other single factor [the book] has inspired and influenced the renaissance of the old houses that has taken place during the last ten years.(4)

Smith achieved recognition for her Japanesque woodblock prints and line drawings, but her true metier was watercolor. In The Rector's Kitchen and View of St. Michael's (Pl. IV)(5) she juxtaposed the high style of Charlestons landmark church with a vignette of a black figure emerging from an outbuilding. The church is delineated almost like an architectural rendering, while the outbuilding and figure are a brilliant display of local color.

Smith was not only a catalyst for architectural preservation, she was also the founding spirit of the Charleston Etchers' Club in 1923. The club was inspired by similar associations around the country(6) and by four respected etchers who visited Charleston between 1910 and 1920: Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940), Gabrielle de Veaux Clements (18581948), Helen Hyde (1868-1919), and Bertha E. Jaques (1863-1941). These women provided technical support and made contacts on behalf of their Charleston counterparts.

The Charleston Etchers' Club thrived during the 1920s, providing expertise, the use of a press owned by the club, and occasional exhibitions. Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Alfred Hutty, and several other members became proficient etchers and discovered that prints were an ideal medium to convey the charms of the city in book and periodical illustrations and as easily transported souvenirs.

Verner worked particularly hard, printing her own plates and selling prints. During the spring she opened her studio to tourists, put up visitors in her house, and served as a guide for museum groups. She made sure that shops and hotels carried postcard reproductions of her etchings, and she wrote and illustrated several books that both furthered her career and promoted Charleston as a destination for visitors. In her Prints and Impressions of Charleston, for which In the Shadow of St. Michael's (Pl. V) was the frontispiece, she wrote: