Social Impression: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection

This exhibition presents dozens of works that were intended at the time of their creation to offer relief from the hurly-burly of the urban setting. The artists represented—Wayman Adams, Colin Campbell Cooper, Elliott Daingerfield, Gaines Ruger Donoho, James Herring, Alfred Hutty, John Ross Key, Blondelle Malone, Paul Plaschke, Hattie Saussy, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Anthony Thieme, Helen Turner, and Ellsworth Woodward, among others—were not all native Southerners; however, all worked in the South at some point. In its presentation of some forty paintings created between 1880 and 1940—including landscapes and genre scenes—Scenic Impressions traces an international aesthetic’s journey to and germination in the American South.