Feature Articles

September Issue 2002

Spartanburg County Museum of Art in Spartanburg, SC, to Feature Retrospective of Works by Josephine Sibley Couper

The Spartanburg County Museum of Art in Spartanburg, SC, had a special incentive in pulling together a major retrospective of the works of Josephine Sibley Couper. Although an important artist in her own right, Couper was also a founder in 1907 of the Arts and Crafts Club, precursor to Spartanburg's Museum of Art. The exhibition which opens Sept. 7 and continues through Oct. 20, acknowledges both Couper's contributions to Spartanburg County and the surrounding areas as well as her own remarkable career.

"This show will be the highlight of our fall season," says Executive Director Theresa Mann, who worked to bring together some 50 pieces that span the artist's lifetime. Included in the retrospective is a series of portraits and colorful landscapes documenting her years in Spartanburg (1900-1918) and the North Carolina mountains. Mann drew from private collectors, museums and family members to amass the work, in the process piecing together a picture of the artist that is nearly as colorful as her paintings.

Known in the art world simply as J.S. Couper, she was born in 1867 to Southern aristocracy in Augusta, GA. Trips abroad at an early age impressed her with Old World art, and her father quickly hired an instructor for his budding artist and built a studio for her on the grounds of their Augusta mansion.

After studying for a time at a Charleston art academy, Couper left for New York to study at the Art Students' League with William Merritt Chase. She would eventually marry cotton broker Butler King Couper and move to Spartanburg in 1900, where she founded with close friend and fellow artist Margaret Law the Arts and Crafts Club. One of their major projects was to organize in 1907 a showing of contemporary American art, including not only her former teacher Chase but also Elliott Daingerfield and Robert Henri. It was during this show that she helped to raise the money to purchase "The Girl with the Red Hair - the Henri piece that remains today the most valuable work in the museum's collection.

Couper's own art focused on experimentation with color and in capturing character in portraits. Unlike Henri and her friend Law, however, Couper had no desire in showing the everyday life of the working class. Instead, Couper painted what she knew best: upper-class society. Befitting a wealthy Southern lady, however, she routinely donated proceeds from commissions to charity. Museums began requesting her work, and one-person shows came in places like New York and Philadelphia and the High Museum in Atlanta.

Following the death of her husband she moved to Montreat, NC, in 1922 and to Tryon, NC, in 1934, where she would bring a taste of New York painters and paintings to the area's growing art community. By the late 1930s she was a fixture in Tryon ­ an imposing woman who must have looked much like one of her paintings with her erect stance, flashing blue eyes, white gloves and gold-headed walking cane.

The Spartanburg retrospective includes several self-portraits that hint at the spirit and personality of Couper, whose mark on the city remains nearly a century later. "By all accounts she was an amazing lady," says Mann. "I think our retrospective will show that."

For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the museum at 864/583-2776, or on the web at (www.sparklenet.com/museumofart/).

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