Mossy Tree

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.