Mossy Tree
Color woodcut on paper
Support size: 11 7/8 x 7 inches; Image size: 11 x 6 inches
Circa 1917–1919
Now on view: TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, South Carolina
As an artist, author, and preservationist, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith was a leader of the Charleston Renaissance, a movement which revived the historic city and her birthplace. As a school girl she took lessons in watercolor, but otherwise was largely self-taught. The epitaph on her grave reads: “Nature I loved, and next to nature art.”
Smith closely studied a friend’s collection of Japanese prints. Using the same technique and materials secured for her by a fellow artist who had lived in Japan, Smith emulated those masters. In Mossy Tree the vertical format, the asymmetry, the turquoise tones, and the simplicity of the composition reflect their influence. Acknowledging her source of inspiration, she used a Japanese-style symbol in the lower right corner.
As published in:
The Charleston Renaissance
As exhibited in:
When East Meets West: Three Centuries of Artistic Discourse, 2018, Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia
Essentially self-taught, Smith studied a collection of Japanese woodblock prints from the Ukiyo-e School owned by her beloved cousin and scientist Motte Alston Read. She experimented with the medium and created six images after her own designs. Her investigations and enthusiasm served as a catalyst for the formation of the Charleston Etching Club, and she was a founding member of the Southern States Art League. Eventually, she abandoned printmaking in favor of watercolors.
Nevertheless, Japanese design and sensibility pervade many of her paintings as well. In Mossy Tree, the verticality, subdued tones, and sensitivity to nature are hallmarks of her Japonisme.
Other works by this artist