Alice Ravenel Huger Smith (American, 1876-1958), Mountain Landscape with River

Watercolor on Whatman's watercolor board, signed at lower right, matted and framed under conservation glass.

Sight size 14 3/4 x 18 in.; Frame dimensions 29 1/2 x 35 1/2 in.

Private Collection, Charleston, South Carolina
Brunk Auctions, Asheville, North Carolina, January 3, 2009, Lot 304

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith was a leading artist of the Charleston Renaissance and one of the most important watercolorists of the American South. Born into a prominent Charleston family, Smith was largely self-taught, receiving only basic training at the Carolina Art Association. After experimenting with oil paints and printmaking, she eventually settled on watercolor as her preferred medium. Her work was influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e prints and reinforced by exposure to the art of Helen Hyde and tonalist painter Birge Harrison. Smith preferred the rural landscape of the Carolina Lowcountry to urban scenes, creating poetic marsh vistas and depictions of moss draped cypresses that captured the mystical atmosphere of the region.

Smith was a founding member of the Charleston Etchers Club and the Southern States Art League and was involved in the Historic Charleston Foundation and Carolina Art Association. She also illustrated her father's book The Dwelling Houses of Charleston in 1917, which helped spark the city's historic preservation movement. Her work is held in collections including the Gibbes Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, High Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the de Young Museum.

Good estate condition; not examined out of the frame.