AFA Autumn 2018

Antiques & Fine Art 95 2018 Alson Skinner Clark (1876–1949), St. Michael’s, Charleston, 1917. Oil on canvas, 32⅛ x 26⅛ inches. While the American South contributed to international Impressionism the considerable talents of its native artists, it also inspired visiting painters with its exotic landscape and indigenous culture. Charleston, South Carolina, with its picturesque Lowcountry environs, was quite successful in promoting and attracting economy-boosting tourism, and it became a popular destination for a number of American Impressionists immediately before and after World War I. Alson Skinner Clark was one of the earliest Impressionists to visit Charleston. His sojourn there in the spring of 1917 produced radiant treatments of both sacred and profane subjects, including St. Michael’s, Charleston . In the same year as Clark’s visit, The Dwelling Houses of Charleston was published and became recognized as seminal to the city’s historic preservation movement. Like Dwelling Houses , Clark’s contemporaneous paintings drew timely attention to Charleston’s architectural assets.