Alice Ravenel Huger Smith

(1876-1958)

In the Great Blake Reserve 20 1/2 x 15 1/2in (52.1 x 39.4cm)

Footnotes

Provenance
Arthur Ackerman & Son, Inc., New York.
Private collection, Newport, Rhode Island.
By descent to the present owner.

Exhibited
(possibly) New York, Arthur Ackerman & Son, Inc., Exhibition of Water Colour Drawings of "Carolina Marshes, Woods and Shores" by Alice R. Huger Smith, 1930.
(possibly) Charleston, South Carolina, Carolina Art Association, Gibbes Art Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition of The Work of Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, March 22-April 25, 1947, p. 8, no. 130, (as the Heron in the Great Blake Reserve).

Alice Ravenel Huger Smith was a native of Charleston, South Carolina and one of the leading figures of the Charleston Renaissance along with artists Elizabeth O'Neill Verner (1883-1979), Alfred Hutty (1877-1954), and Anna Heyward Taylor (1879-1956). The Charleston Renaissance was a period lasting from the end of World War I up to the beginning of World War II in which the city of Charleston experienced a boom in the arts. Local artists, writers, architects, and historic preservationists came together during this period to improve their city and protect the remaining historic buildings. Other artists of note that contributed to the Charleston Rennaissance include Edwin Harleston (1882-1931), Anne Taylor Nash (1884-1968), and William Posey Silva (1859-1948), as well as visiting artists Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940) and Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Unlike many of her fellow artists working during the Charleston Renaissance, Smith preferred depicting the rural landscapes of the South Carolina Lowcountry and shedding light on vanishing ways of life in South Carolina rather than the urban scenes of everyday life in downtown Charleston. Her best-known work is a series of twenty-nine watercolors that she painted to illustrate A Carolina Rice Plantation of the Fifties (1936) by Herbert Sass. Among her twenty-nine watercolors painted for this series, her painting titled The "Reserve" or "Back-Water" in Summer closely resembles the present work in both composition and style.

The present work is believed to depict the marsh lands of what was once Blake's Plantation located just outside the city limits of Charleston, South Carolina. The plantation was named after Arthur Middleton Blake (1812-1881) when he purchased the nearly 4,630 acre plantation in 1843 from the estate of John Middleton, his cousin. By 1859, Blake continued expanding the plantation and by 1861, shortly after the start of the Civil War, it is estimated that the plantation was comprised of 9,100 acres. Blake would return to England at the onset of the Civil War and in 1862, Blake's Plantation was commandeered by the Confederate Army and was used as a regimental headquarters to protect ships running the blockade on the South Santee River. Union troops eventually invaded, burning the buildings on the land along with approximately 100,000 bushels of rice, the plantations primary crop. It is reported that during the invasion, 400 slaves boarded the Union steamers and Robert Blake, one of the slaves, later received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Union Navy. After Arthur Middleton Blake's death in 1881, the plantation remained a part of his estate until Hugh R. Garden purchased the plantation in 1898 with the intention that it become part of the Santee Club, a club whose aim was to acquire tracts of land in South Carolina to use and maintain as private preserves for its members for the purpose of hunting, fishing, and yachting among other activities. Smith would have painted the present work when the lands were part of this club's land holdings. The original plantation lands are located in what is today the Santee Coastal Reserve, 24,000 acres of nature reserve managed by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.