Painting the Southern Coast

West Fraser

Description

The beauty and spirit of coastal landscapes and waterways captured and celebrated in art

Painting the Southern Coast: The Art of West Fraser is a stunning collection of the works of West Fraser, one of the nation's most respected painters of representational art. A mastery of his medium and the scope of work ensure his place in southern art history. A true son of the lowcountry, Fraser has dedicated much of his career to capturing the lush, primordial beauty of the Southeast's coastal regions that have been altered by man and time. The 260 works in this book are representative of the sketches, studies, and finished paintings he has generated over his nearly forty-year career, works that depict coastal locales from Winyah Bay, South Carolina, to St. Augustine, Florida, and include Charleston, Hilton Head, Savannah, and the islands of the lowcountry through the Golden Isles of Georgia.

Fraser's goal with each of his paintings is to create a portrait of what he calls "my country." He captures on canvas not only the visual beauty of the landscape, but the spirit and soul of each place. From the sultry streets of Savannah to the winding waterways and unique environs of the region's sea islands, the works included offer a view of the land he loves. Fraser augments his visual tour of the coast with original maps of the region and location coordinates of each painting, enhancing the viewer's knowledge and appreciation of the region as well as Fraser's artistic gift.

Painting the Southern Coast: The Art of West Fraser includes essays by Jean Stern, executive director of the Irvine Museum, and Martha R. Severens, Greenville County Museum of Art curator (1992-2010) and authority on southern art. Fraser has also written an autobiographical essay in which he discusses the experiences and influences that have shaped his work and his life as one of America's noted landscape artists.

Sujets

• Landscapes
• Themes
• Subjects
• Monographs
• América del Sur
• Greenville County Museum of Art
• Painting
• Oil sketch
• The Marshes of Glynn
• Seascapes
• Charleston Harbor
• Jacques le Moyne
• Landscape art
• Monograph
• Savannah River
• Watercolor painting
• Spanish moss
• South America
• Oil painting
• Impressionism
• Art
• Childe Hassam
• Andrew Wyeth
• Winslow Homer
• John Singer Sargent
• Camille Pissarro
• John Ruskin
• Peinture

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611176964
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

P AINTING THE S OUTHERN C OAST
Painting the Southern Coast
T HE A RT OF W EST F RASER
With Introductory Essays by Jean Stern and Martha R. Severens
© 2016 West Fraser
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN : 978-1-61117-694-0 (cloth) ISBN : 978-1-61117-695-7 (paperback) ISBN : 978-1-61117-696-4 (ebook)
TITLE PAGE IMAGE: PLATE A
Tidal Pool
2007 | 11" × 14" OIL | DAWS ISLAND , S.C . LATITUDE 32°18'29.37" N : LONGITUDE 80°45'28.37" W COLLECTION OF BILLYO AND PEGGY O ’ DONNELL
FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION : Sunlight , 2014, Ossabaw Island, Ga., latitude 31°44'6.07"N : longitude 81°7'14.70"W, collection of Darrel and Carol Johnson
I dedicate this book to the three men who influenced and molded my interests and character. My father’s best friend, Olin S. Fraser, shared his passion for making things with his hands. My uncle, Charles E. Fraser, shared his intellectual curiosity and showed me how to “think outside the box.” My father, Joseph Bacon Fraser Jr., shared his passion for the outdoors and taught me about a good work ethic, humility, and strength of resolve. From his example, I finally learned how to be a loving husband, father, and gentleman. Most important, he helped me believe in myself. All three shared their passion for history and instilled in me the need for ethical stewardship of the land. All three are greatly missed.
CONTENTS
The Marshes of Glynn
Sidney Lanier
Acknowledgments

The Light of the South
Jean Stern
MAP A: THE SOUTHEAST COAST NORTH AMERICA : Winyah Bay, South Carolina, to St. Augustine, Florida
My Story
West Fraser
Sunset Point of Pines
Marjory Wentworth
The Artist in Perspective: West Fraser’s Love Affair with the Southeastern Coast
Martha R. Severens
The Paintings
MAP #1/ PLATES 1–18: Winyah Bay and Santee River Delta, Including McClellanville, South Carolina
MAP #2/ PLATES 19–65: Charleston Region, Including Rockville and Edisto Island, South Carolina
MAP #3/ PLATES 66–146: Port Royal Sound Basin, Including Edisto Beach, Spring Island, and Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina
MAP #4/ PLATES 147–179: Savannah to St. Catherines Island, Georgia
MAP #5/ PLATES 180–189: Sapelo Island to Brunswick, Georgia, Including Darien, Sea Island, and St. Simons Island
MAP #6/ PLATES 190–218: Cumberland Island, Georgia, Including Fernandina Beach, Florida
MAP #7/ PLATES 219–225: Little Talbot Island to St. Augustine, Florida

Index

Plate B
Spanish Roots
2008 | 30" × 36" OIL | DARIEN , GA . LATITUDE 31°22'15.54" N : LONGITUDE 81°26'18.05" W COLLECTION OF MR. AND MRS. GEORGE DEAN JOHNSON JR .
THE MARSHES OF GLYNN
Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,—
Emerald twilights,—
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;—
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,—
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,—
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;—
O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine;
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,—
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,—
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
The vast sweet visage of space.
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
To the forest-dark:—
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning low,—
Thus—with your favor—soft, with a reverent hand,
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand,
Free
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows
the firm sweet limbs of a girl.
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.
And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run
’Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;
And the sea and the marsh are one.
How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men,
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following individuals and organizations have kindly donated funds to make this publication possible:
Tommy and Cindy Baysden
James W. Lea III
Dean Moss and Wendy Zara
Larry L. Peery
Tom and Ann Ramee
Scott and Margaret Richardson
and
Charles H. Morris Center at Trustees’ Garden,
Savannah, Georgia
www.trusteesgarden.com
Friends of Spring Island, South Carolina
www.springisland.com
Greyfield Inn, Cumberland Island, Georgia
www.greyfieldinn.com
Heritage Classic Foundation, Hilton Head Island,
South Carolina
www.heritageclassicfoundation.com
Helen