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July Issue 2008
Sumter County Gallery of Art in Sumter,
SC, Features Works by Elizabeth White and other Works from the
Permanent Collection
The Sumter County Gallery of Art in Sumter, SC, is presenting the exhibitions, The Elizabeth White Collection & Selections From The Permanent Collection, on view through July 19, 2008.
The Sumter County Gallery of Art holds much of the Elizabeth White permanent collection, which has not been exhibited since the early 90s. SCGA is proud to present an exhibition of the collection which will include ten pieces that have been restored and reframed and have not been seen by the public before. In 2005, the Sumter County Gallery of Art made a commitment to become a collecting institution (on a modest level), and Selections from the Permanent Collection will also present some of those works.
Elizabeth White
Probably the most famous artist that Sumter
has produced, Elizabeth White (1893-1976), was an accomplished
portraitist, watercolorist and printmaker, in 1923 studied at
the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, working extensively
in oils and refining her ideas about color.
In 1927, White took a trip to Europe with her friend Julia Reynolds.
While there, the women were drawn to the lovely European postcards
and Reynolds encouraged White to create some postcards that would
capture the beauty of South Carolina. White produced many postcards
of her original drawings and etchings of Southern landscapes and
architecture, which were an immediate success and actually led
to the invitation in 1933 to attend the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough,
New Hampshire, one of most the prestigious artist colonies in
the country that is still active today.Working alongside artists
such as Willa Cather, DuBose Heyward, Thornton Wilder and Julia
Peterkin, White considered her inclusion there as one of the high
points of her artistic life.
The 1930s was an extremely successful period for White as an artist. In 1930 she studied etching with Alfred Hutty in Charleston, SC. She returned to the MacDowell Colony in 1934 and in 1936. In 1935, White was invited to join the Society of Arts and Sciences in New York. In 1939 she had a solo exhibition of 49 of her etchings at the Smithsonian Institute, Division of Graphic Arts. Her piece, Birches and Pines: MacDowell Colony was purchased by the Library of Congress.
White's etching, All God's Chillun Got Wings, arguably her best known work, was one of five pieces selected from South Carolina to be shown at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The etching was also shown at the 1940 Venice Biennial, but never returned. Hitler's troops ransacked the American Pavilion at the Biennial, and the piece did not survive, presumably because of its black theme.
White produced art in all places that celebrated the beauty of the different landscapes. White made a significant contribution to the artistic movement known as "regionalism". Her formal portraits of both blacks and whites along with her etchings, watercolors and oils of moss-draped live oaks, tall pines, country churches, and black field hands were depicted in a decidedly romanticized way, a cherished way of life that was quickly disappearing.
For a period of time White enjoyed a national and international reputation as an artist, but as a critic, writing in The State newspaper noted in his review of her 1987 exhibition at the Sumter Gallery of Art: "Miss White's life as an artist was long and prolific, but it was not much of a career. She was not dependent on her art for a living and made few attempts to market it. Few of her works are dated or titled for instance."
White never married and was wealthy. Unlike many female artists of her generation who typically were not encouraged to go to school to study art, were not supported by family or spouses, or stopped producing art when they started producing children, White was free from these constraints. She was also one of the few women artists during the 1930s and 1940s in South Carolina adept in the field of etching. There were not many female artists with White's initiative to not only leave the state but the country, for the purpose of broadening her artistic horizons. White died in 1976. In 1977 the Sumter Gallery of Art moved to the Elizabeth White house, an antebellum Greek Revival Style home built in 1854, where it remained for 26 years.
Jonathan Green
Although modest, SCGA's permanent collection boosts some local, regional and nationally know artists including Jonathan Green, Tarleton Blackwell, Ray Davenport, Ronald Gonzalez (on loan from the Sumter County Cultural Commission), Susan Harbage Page, Juan Logan, Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, Deane Ackerman, Walter Thompson and Janet Orselli.
For further information check our SC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the gallery at 803/775-0543 or visit (www.sumtergallery.org).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2008 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2008 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.