Nice Alice R. H. Smith watercolor. 26 x 22 inches. Provenance: private owner.
Biography: 1876 - 1958. Alice Ravenel Huger Smith was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1876. She had the schooling of a gentlewoman of that day, which included classes in drawing and painting at the Carolina Art Association. However, she did not visit great galleries nor attend a university. Essentially she was self-taught as an artist.At first her artistic talent was directed at designing dance programs, tally and place cards, fans and glove cases. Then she sketched Charleston street vendors, for which she found a ready market. She gave it up, lest success at a lower form of art tempt her not to pursue higher forms. About 1902 she began receiving commissions to copy ancestor portraits, with which Charleston abounded. When she had mastered that field, she gave it up too.Around 1906 she began painting in watercolor, which became her most successful medium. At the same time, she was increasingly drawn to landscapes as subjects. About 1910 she met Birge Harrison, founder of the Woodstock Art Association in New York. His views on landscape painting reinforced her own, and he is the only artist whose influence she ever acknowledged.From 1917 to 1919, she studied Japanese prints, even after she gave up producing them (and continued to collect rare Japanese U-Kiyoye prints). The delicate coloration of her subsequent watercolors reflects this Japanese influence. In the early 1920s, she did etchings, and taught the technique to other Charlestonians, most notable Elizabeth O'Neill Verner. After 1924 Smith worked almost exclusively in watercolors, which she found most conducive to depicting the soft, hazy atmosphere of the Carolina low country, her chosen subject matter.Smith wrote in 1936 that "throughout my life I have been trying to paint the rich planting section of South Carolina, that long strip of flat lowlands lying within the influence of the tides, which extends to about 40 or 50 miles from the sea." Her subjects were marshes, beaches, cypress swamps, palmettos, sluggish streams meandering through rice fields, egrets, herons and ibises.

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American, 19th century: This work was executed by an unknown hand, and can only be identified by origin (i.e., region, period).

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