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The Art of Alfred Hutty:
Woodstock to Charleston
January 20, 2012 through April
22, 2012
The Gibbes Museum
of Art organized the exhibition The Art of Alfred Hutty: Woodstock to
Charleston, offering a career retrospective of the 20th 
century American artist Alfred Hutty, the master painter
and printmaker who is considered one of the principal artists of the Charleston
Renaissance. The exhibition ran from January 20, 2012 through April 22,
2012 at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Following the premiere at the Gibbes,
the exhibition is traveling to the Greenville County (S.C.) Museum of Art
and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia. The Greenville County
Museum of Art exhibition is being held May 16 through July 15, 2012. (right:
Alfred Hutty (American, 1877 - 1954), Day's End (also known as Close
of Day), ca. 1940, Watercolor on paper 18 x 24 inches. Courtesy
of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Brumley, Charleston, S.C.)
The Art of Alfred Hutty: Woodstock to Charleston features evocative landscapes and realistic studies of the human
condition created by Alfred Hutty (1877-1954) in Woodstock, New York and
Charleston. The exhibition includes sixty works in oil, watercolor, pastel,
and most importantly, etchings, drypoints, and lithographs.
Among the first artists to settle in the Art Students League
colony at Woodstock, New York, in the early 1900s, Hutty established himself
as a leading painter of the town's natural environs. For more than a decade,
he honed his skills in oil and watercolor, producing intimate portrayals
of Woodstock's mountains, lakes, and streams before his career took him
to South Carolina.
Hutty first visited Charleston in 1920 and according to
one of the main legends of the Charleston Renaissance he excitedly wired
his wife back in Woodstock: "Come quickly, have found heaven."
Hutty began dividing his time seasonally between homes and studios in Charleston
and 
Woodstock, teaching art classes
for the Carolina Art Association at what is now the Gibbes Museum of Art
-- a relationship that eventually led to the Gibbes' status as the largest
public repository of Hutty's work. In Charleston, Hutty was inspired to
try his hand at printmaking for the first time, and it is this artistic
medium for which he is best known. His skillful prints depicting the city's
surviving colonial and antebellum architecture, its rural environs, and
its African American population drew unprecedented national attention to
both Hutty and to Charleston. (left: Alfred Hutty (American, 1877
- 1954), Meeting Street, ca. 1925, Oil on canvas, 23 1/2 x 29 1/2
inches. Courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art/ Carolina Art Association,
Charleston, S.C.)
The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalog titled
The Life and Art of Alfred Hutty. This illustrated survey of Hutty's
career offers the first comprehensive examination of his impact on American
art in the South and beyond. The text and catalog of prints offer authoritative
documentation of more than 250 of Hutty's works. Published in cooperation
with the University of South Carolina Press, the book is edited by Gibbes
Curator of Collections Sara C. Arnold and Stephen G. Hoffius and features
essays by Arnold, Alexis L. Boylan, Harlan Greene, Edith Howle, and a catalog
of known prints by Hutty.
During the exhibition at the Gibbes, related programming
included Rebirth, Refinement, and Rivalry: A Charleston Renaissance Symposium,
which was moderated by Angela Mack, featuring the contributors to The
Life and Art of Alfred Hutty. The sympsium was held Friday, January
20, 2012.
Object labels with text from the exhibition
- [Label 1]
-
- Untitled (New York Snow Scene),
n.d.
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of Dr. James G. Simpson, Charleston, S.C.
-
- Hutty grew up in the Midwest, and as a student in Kansas
City, Missouri, in the mid 1890s he showed promise as a draftsman. He won
a scholarship to the newly established Kansas City School of Fine Arts
where he was given his first introduction to formal art training. Early
on, he used his art skills to design stained-glass windows in an art-glass
factory in Kansas City and worked briefly as an illustrator for the Kansas
City Star.
-
- Hutty married Bessie Burris Crafton in 1902 and the couple
had their first and only child, Warren Crafton Hutty in 1904. Shortly after
the birth of their son, Hutty moved his family from Kansas City to St.
Louis, Missouri, where he enrolled in art classes at the Saint Louis School
and Museum of Fine Arts. In St. Louis, Hutty first encountered the work
of his future teacher and mentor, Birge Harrison who was directing the
New York Art Students League summer school in the newly founded art colony
at Woodstock, New York. In 1908, Hutty moved his family to New York and
enrolled in Harrison's classes.
-
-
- [Label 2]
-
- Early June, ca. 1914
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of Patricia Holsclaw and the family of the late
Raymond Holsclaw
-
- In addition to his participation in the Art Students
League during his early days at Woodstock, Hutty was associated with the
Blue Dome Group, one of the many art communities that formed in and around
Woodstock. The Blue Dome Group was established and directed exclusively
by women but counted Hutty, Jonas Lie, and several other men as associates.
The teaching emphasis was solely on painting the female figure in plein
air. Hutty and Lie exhibited in New York City with the Blue Dome Group
in 1914. Early June was exhibited at the National Academy of Design
in 1915, and is likely an example of Hutty's early work with the group.
-
-
- [Label 3]
-
- Sketchbook, 1908
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Bound volume
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- A1991.005
-
- Upon learning of the burgeoning art colony in Woodstock,
New York, Hutty moved his family from St. Louis, Missouri, to the small
New York village and enrolled in Birge Harrison's classes at the New York
Art Students League summer school. This, Hutty's earliest known surviving
sketchbook, dates to his first summer in Woodstock in 1908. Its rough pencil
sketches of the mountain ridges and trees demonstrate his instinctive gravitation
toward interpreting nature.
-
-
- [Label 4]
-
- Untitled (early sketch of Broadview)
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Watercolor on paper
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 2010.003
-
- In 1912, Hutty and his wife Bessie purchased a sheep
farm on Ohayo Mountain in Woodstock where Hutty established his studio.
Overlooking the Catskills to the west and the Hudson Valley to the east
the farm was dubbed "Broadview" by the Huttys. The panoramic
views of snow-capped mountains and hardwood forests provided lasting inspiration
for Hutty and the home served as the couple's primary residence for the
rest of their lives.
-
-
- [Label 5]
-
- Untitled (Autumn Landscape, Woodstock), n.d.
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of Private Collection
-
- After his initial move to Woodstock in 1908 Hutty temporarily
left the town and sought work in the New York City area to support his
family while continuing his artistic training. The Huttys relocated to
Leonia, New Jersey, on the outskirts of Manhattan, and Hutty once again
found employment working in stained-glass design for Tiffany Studios. While
living in Leonia, Hutty enrolled in George Bridgman's anatomy and life
classes at the New York City Art Students League in 1911. He also studied
at the League under Impressionist landscape painter Frank Vincent DuMond
in 1912.
-
- Hutty developed an impressionistic style early in his
career. Following the principles of landscape painting that he garnered
under the tutelage of Birge Harrison, Dumond and others, he focused his
efforts on capturing the moods of the changing seasons as this autumn landscape
exemplifies.
-
-
- [Label 6]
-
- Virgin Morning, 1917
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1956.005
-
- Hutty began to exhibit his works throughout the country
during the second decade of the twentieth century. Some of his earliest
oils were exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1913 and within
a year he had developed a relationship with the prestigious Macbeth Gallery
in New York City. In 1915 Hutty exhibited a group of twenty oil paintings,
representing his work in both landscapes and figures, at the Salmagundi
Club in New York City. Several months later he organized a group show at
the Kanst Gallery in Los Angeles, exhibiting his works alongside fellow
Woodstock artists Birge Harrison, Harry Leith-Ross, Zulma Steele, and Marion
Bullard.
-
- Virgin Morning was exhibited
in numerous galleries and museum exhibitions in 1917 and illustrates
Hutty's delight in the individuality of trees that he would later bring
to his etchings.
-
-
- [Label 7]
-
- Ships in Harbor, 1917
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1999.025
-
- When the United States entered World War I, Hutty looked
for opportunities to serve the country using his artistic skills. Ultimately
he accepted a position as a marine camoufleur for the United States Shipping
Board. His duties included designing new camouflage patterns for navy vessels.
This "dazzle" system of camouflage was intended to distort the
outlines of the ships in order to mislead enemy submarines as to the vessel's
size and course.
-
- While stationed along the docks in New York, Hutty sketched
ships at harbor that bore the innovative designs that he had in part developed.
From those sketches Hutty painted a series of three oil paintings that
were shown in the Allied War Salon at the American Art Galleries in New
York in 1918.
-
-
- [Label 8]
-
- Windswept, 1924
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Etching on paper
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1955.005.0012
-
- Though printmaking was a prevalent part of the Woodstock
art colony from the beginning, Hutty did not begin to experiment with this
medium until after his first trip to Charleston in 1920. Though his earliest
prints depicted Charleston scenes, he did not restrict his printmaking
to southern views.
-
- Hutty enjoyed the solitude of nature and he often ventured
into the woods with his sketch materials. He was especially fond of capturing
the essence of various tree species. His prints of these subjects frequently
drew the most attention from contemporary critics: "No one surpasses
Hutty in the delineation of trees" wrote Ada Rainy of the Washington
Post, "under his skillful needle, his trees emerge glorified beings
endowed with personality." Hutty's Windswept was awarded the
Samuel T. Shaw Prize for etching at the Salmagundi Club in New York in
1924.
-
-
- [Label 9]
-
- Little Italy, 1925
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Etching on paper
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1955.005.0002
-
- This intimate etching is of the village of Glasco, New
York, a community on the Hudson River where a glass factory in Shady, New
York, had a warehouse. The winding road depicted in the etching became
known as the Glasco turnpike and runs between the towns of Glasco and Shady
just north of Woodstock.
-
-
- [Label 10]
-
- New England Fishing Village,
1923
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Etching on paper
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1977.017.0009
-
- Though Charleston and Woodstock were Hutty's chief subjects,
during summers he spent in Woodstock he often sought out new destinations
for creative inspiration. In the early 1920s Hutty spent time in Gloucester
and Rockport, Massachusetts, where he executed several etchings of the
towns' fishing wharves including New England Fishing Village.
-
-
- [Label 11]
-
- Untitled (Maine Coast), ca.
1935
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Oil on canvas
- Courtesy of the Howle-Throckmorton Collection, Charleston,
S.C.
-
- By the 1930s Hutty and his wife Bessie were traveling
regularly by automobile. In 1932 they summered on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.
In 1935 they traveled to Maine, staying at Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, using
Brooks Fish House Studio as Hutty's base for part of the summer and later
moving inland, where he taught classes at North Bay Farm on Great Pond
Lake in Oakland.
-
-
- [Label 12]
-
- Across the Valley, 1930
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Etching on paper framed with pencil sketch
- Courtesy of the Howle-Throckmorton Collection, Charleston,
S.C.
-
- Across the Valley was the
first print selected for distribution by the American College Society of
Print Collectors in 1930. Hutty's etching is shown here along with his
original pencil composition. The patterned grid on the pencil drawing was
used to guide the transfer of an image to a copper plate. Notably the trees
depicted in the pencil sketch and in the final etched print are inverted
in the printing process.
-
-
- [Label 13]
-
- The Footlight Players Workshop,
ca. 1936
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Watercolor on paper
- Courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Long
-
- During the 1940s Hutty became closely affiliated with
Charleston's local theater organization, the Footlight Players. Serving
as the president and second vice president of the group for several years
running, Hutty also functioned as the set designer and often painted scenery
for the productions.
-
- This painting features the Footlight Players' workshop
on Queen Street, a building the organization purchased and renovated for
productions. Hutty made an etching similar to this painting which he allowed
the organization to use in its publications. In 1946, Hutty and the Footlight
Players' young director, Emmett Robinson, together painted a mural called
Personalities of Charleston Theatre History in the interior of the
building. The mural represents two hundred years of key actors, playwrights,
and directors of Charleston theater in one scene, and it remains on the
workshop walls today.
-
-
- [Label 14]
-
- Meeting Street, ca. 1925
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1961.010
-
- Hutty first arrived in Charleston in 1920 to serve as
director of the Carolina Art Association Art School held at the Gibbes
Art Gallery (now known as the Gibbes Museum of Art). He returned to the
city for the next three years to work in this capacity, teaching drawing
and painting in portraiture, landscape, and still life.
-
- He immediately recognized the wealth of subject matter
the city had to offer artists and in a report to the Carolina Art Association
after his second season in Charleston, he stated "you have a very
attractive city to artists, attractive in many ways; and from now on I
am sure that you will find more artists coming each year (They will bring
the tourists later I am bound to confess!)"
-
- During the 1920s, Charleston's leading citizens actively
promoted the city as a tourist destination. Views of Charleston like Hutty's
painting Meeting Street, which depicts the city's central thoroughfare
and one of its most distinguished landmarks in St. Michael's church, played
an important role in making "America's Most Historic City" better
known to the rest of the country.
-
-
- [Label 15]
-
- At the Bend, Church Street,
n.d.
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Watercolor on paper
- Courtesy of Private Collection
-
- Hutty believed that he produced more work in Charleston
than anywhere else. He was frequently found on the streets of the Charleston
peninsula with his easel set up to take in the aging colonial and antebellum
homes resulting in works such as At the Bend, Church Street. The
bend in the road near Church and Water Streets was only a few blocks away
from Hutty's Tradd Street studio and many of Hutty's paintings were inspired
by this picturesque thoroughfare.
-
-
- [Label 16]
-
- The Old Smyth Gate, Charleston, South Carolina, 1927
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Etching on paper
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1955.007.0012
-
- Not unaware of the budding tourist market in Charleston,
Hutty likely identified a commercial audience for his work soon after his
arrival. Images of Charleston's historic gates and gardens, such as Hutty's
masterful rendering of The Old Smyth Gate, were popular among visitors
to the historic city. Hutty produced an edition of 150 prints of this admired
subject.
-
- The Smyth gate, often referred to as the "pineapple
gate" by Charleston's tourist industry, is located at 14 Legare Street.
The massive brick columns, capped with decorative stone finials resembling
pineapples, and the striking wrought iron gate panels were added to the
original property in the early 1800s by the second owner, George Edwards.
J. Adger Smyth bought the house in 1879 from his business partner, Andrew
Adger. It remained in the Smyth family until 1930.
-
-
- [Label 17]
-
- My Doorway on Tradd Street,
1941
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Drypoint on paper
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1955.005.0013
-
- After visiting Charleston annually for eight years --
each season renting different rooms and studios scattered throughout the
historic district -- Hutty and his wife Bessie decided to invest in a residence
of their own. In 1928, they purchased a house at 46 Tradd Street. Originally
built by William Vanderhorst for his son James around 1770, the historic,
brick single-house had fallen into severe disrepair. The Huttys renovated
the main house and converted the detached kitchen that also had served
as quarters for enslaved servants in the nineteenth century into a studio
for Alfred. Hutty made several etchings of his beloved Charleston home
including My Doorway on Tradd Street.
-
-
- [Label 18]
-
- Magnolia Gardens, 1920
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Oil on canvas
- Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1920.006.0001
-
- While the cityscapes of Charleston proved to be a great
inspiration to Hutty, he was enamored of the South's spring foliage. He
recalled in an interview years after his first arrival, "although
I loved the old town greatly, the magnificence of the Middleton and Magnolia
Gardens completely enthralled me." His enthusiasm for the rich spring
flora is reflected in the many paintings he made on the grounds of these
historic plantations. Magnolia Gardens was one of the first paintings
Hutty completed during his inaugural visit to Charleston in 1920, and was
the first work by Hutty acquired by the Gibbes Museum of Art.
-
-
- [Label 19]
-
- Day's End (also known as
Close of Day), ca. 1940
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Watercolor on paper
- Courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Brumley, Charleston, S.C.
-
- Hutty considered his watercolor Day's End his
finest painting, and his drypoint etching of the same scene one of his
favorite prints. Developed with thin washes of paint, Day's End
evokes a contemplative narrative. Depicting an African American couple
cast in long arboreal shadows, headed for an open field of hazy evening
light and toward a modest farm, this painting suggests the end of a long
day or long journey and movement toward a period of rest.
-
- The painting demonstrates Hutty's revived interest in
watercolor. In 1940, around the time this work was completed, he remarked
in an interview: "I am having a renaissance of deep zest for watercolor."
Day's End also exemplifies Hutty's increased interest in the rural
customs of southern life. Like many artists of the American Scene art movement
that flourished during the Depression, Hutty began to capture rural landscapes
on canvas and in print form.
-
-
- [Label 20]
-
- The Discussion Group, ca.
1946
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Watercolor on paper
- Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1996.008
-
- Later in his career, Hutty's oils and watercolors were
rarely exhibited outside of Charleston or Woodstock and despite his success
as an etcher Hutty was always reluctant to be identified solely as a printmaker.
Prior to an exhibition of his watercolors at the Corcoran Art Gallery in
1940 he wrote, "I painted in oil and watercolors a long, long time
before I began etching.... I have year by year sent fewer paintings in
color to the northern shows but I still use both media. They [the paintings]
are frequently shown in my studio or at the Fort Sumter Hotel where I have
a permanent exhibit.... They are frequently sold too, so that is why they
are seldom seen in exhibits in the north!" Hutty often painted watercolors
and oils of Charleston scenes that he also translated to print; The
Discussion Group and Discussion Group in Carolina exemplify
this practice.
-
-
- [Label 21]
-
- Des Gens, 1927
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Lithograph on paper
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art
- 1977.017.0044
-
- During the summer of 1927 Hutty studied the mechanics
of lithography. He enrolled in a class taught by his friend Bolton Brown
in Woodstock and began to reproduce his pencil sketches as lithographs.
Brown, who published Lithography for Artists in 1930, began making
lithographs in Woodstock in 1918 and taught the process to many other artists,
including Theodor Wahl, George Bellows, Mary Bonner, and Konrad Cramer.
-
- That summer Hutty produced a group of lithographs, primarily
of European and Woodstock scenes. Brown recalled in his journals that "Hutty
sat out in the field one day and drew a lithograph on stone while the rain
poured down in rivers using one of my waterproof crayons." Though
Hutty was pleased with his results in the technique, handling the heavy
stones required for lithography was a laborious process. Hutty, who was
fifty years old when he took up the medium, professed in a letter dated
April 17, 1932, that he "had many times planned to take up lithography
but so far had never again touched a stone." The dozen or so lithographs
Hutty produced during the summer of 1927 were indeed his last.
-
-
- [Label 22]
-
- Burnham Beeches, England
[no. 1], 1926
- By Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954)
- Etching on paper
- Collection of the Gibbes Museum of Art