by Nancy Muse
The South: A Story to Tell" on view at Ledbetter Lusk Gallery attempts to bring into focus a picture of Southern life in the 19th and early 20th centuries through selected paintings, drawings, sculpture, and furniture. The period covered is fairly broad -- 1800 to 1940 -- as are the criteria for inclusion. The craftspeople and artists represented here are to have come from the South or been drawn to the South. The curators sought pieces in six very specific areas of Southern art: portraiture, genre painting, landscape painting, and Southern impressionism date primarily from the 19th century, while Southern social realism and self-taught art, as represented here anyway, tend to be 20th-century phenomena. The sideboards and sugar chests are 19th-century.
All of the artists have some connection to the South, however tenuous. John James Audubon's Red Headed Duck (circa 1800-10) seems to be included because it is a watercolor of a duck and the South has ducks. It is marvelous to see an Audubon original, though; they are rarely exhibited outside museums. A set of drawings by Thomas Hart Benton is also part of the exhibition. The social realist was born in Missouri, hence not strictly speaking a Southerner, but his images are of men loading cotton in Louisiana, and it doesn't get much more Southern than that.
Other loose connections to the South are those claimed by Lillian Mathilde Genthe, a Philadelphia native who had the privilege to study under Whistler in Paris but seems to be included here because of her tutelage under Elliot Daingerfield, a Southern impressionist whose work also appears in this exhibition. Genthe's Sylvan Solitude displays an elegant palette to represent a female nude, a signature subject matter, in the wood. Genthe is the only female of the 19th-century painters in the exhibition.
The genre paintings are probably the least palatable to a contemporary audience. Eastman Johnson's painting Life in the South (circa 1860-70) may fetch $650,000 if all goes well in gallery terms, but its subject matter -- happy slaves in their quarters -- is not the kind of constant companion most of us would like to hang on our walls. Others of this ilk, like William Aiken Walker's Charleston County Cabin (circa 1885) are interesting as historical records of what was popular in that day.
The portraiture represented here is quite entertaining. Irish-born itinerant Southern painter Trevor Thomas Fowler's portrait of Andrew Jackson in about 1840 is a likeness of Jackson as an old man, after his tenure in the White House.
The exhibition contains some marvelous landscapes. Chauncey Foster Ryder's The Watauga River (Tennessee) boasts a beautiful muted palette. Martin Johnson Heade's Florida River Scene of 1901 is painted in exquisite hues of peach, olive, and cerulean. These pieces are more timeless in feeling than either the genre painting or the portraiture.
Although born in Switzerland, Carl Gutherz moved to Memphis as a child. His lush painting of hollyhocks, an example of Southern impressionism by virtue of his residency here, was painted in France.
Much about this exhibition has implications regarding class and race. The furniture is especially indicative of wealth, particularly the circa-1790-1810 sideboard of non-indigenous wood. The sideboards and sugar chests in this exhibit were status symbols in their own day as surely as they are now, but for different reasons. Regardless of these weightier issues, though, the furniture can be enjoyed on a purely aesthetic level for the beautiful woods and joinery.
Among the 20th-century pieces, one woman and four black artists are represented. Bill Traylor, born a slave in Alabama, began drawing only at the age of 85. His truly charming Black Woman with Purse and Mule Grazing are fine examples of work by the self-taught artist. William O. Golding was another black, self-taught artist whose work displays an obvious honesty.
Sculptor William Edmondson, a son of former slaves, was the first African American to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. He claimed that the voice of God called on him to carve figures, one of which appears in this show.
Robert Gwathmey was the only black painter in the exhibition to receive formal training. The circa-1945 gouache Sharecropper typifies his social commentary. Gwathmey taught in the Northwest but would return to his native Tidewater, Virginia, periodically for subject matter.
Knute Heldner's The Dream and Ralph Chesse's Canaan depict black subject matter in an apparent naive way, although they were painted by art-educated, white men. Canaan brings to mind some of Gauguin's Breton painting in its bold color and grouping of figures. The chilly palette of The Dream bespeaks Heldner's Swedish birth.
A stated purpose of this show was to assemble items that would portray the South's "distinct set of values and way of life." Whether or not this purpose is completely achieved, the exhibition at least provides part of the picture, and maybe that's all we get. In attempting to characterize the South, questions of race and class are inevitable. What do the blacks portrayed in the slave quarters have to do with the status-symbol sugar chests or the black sharecroppers painted in the 20th century by educated whites? Do these items have any connection whatsoever to the black artists whose works appear in the show? Interestingly, the same disparity that characterizes this show in terms of haves and have-nots has long characterized the South. To that extent, this exhibition does portray Southern culture. If possessing a sugar chest (not to mention the sugar to put in one) was a symbol of status in the 19th century, imagine what owning a $650,000 painting would do for one's image in the late 20th. The fact that these pieces are not just on exhibition, as they would be in a museum, but also for sale is the completion of a circle.