Lot 132: ALICE SCOTT CHARLESTON FLOWER SELLER

Alice Scott Original Flower seller, 1945, signed "Alice Scott", lower right, gouache on card, 14 x 10 inch in modern gilt frame, 23 x 18-1/2 in. Weight 4 pds 2 oz. PROVENANCE: A Charleston SC Private Estate. Alice Scott Scanland, who painted under the name “Alice Scott,” was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1924. She is best known for her depictions of the American South, especially her figurative and genre paintings of African American subjects, though she also painted still lifes, landscapes and regional scenes of her native South Carolina and her later homes in Pensacola and Tallahassee, Florida. While living in Charleston, Scanland became interested in theater. She was commissioned to paint a group of artworks for the opera Porgy and Bess, that toured with the New York company. Her painting studio was next to the Old Dock Street Theater, where she became an active member of the theater community, taught art classes, and painted the people and sights around Charleston. She took a particular interest in the culture of the Gullah, a group of African Americans descended from enslaved Africans who settled along the southern Atlantic coast, forming a vital part of Charleston’s heritage. While her early compositions in watercolor capture the region’s people and landscapes with subtle nuance, Scanlan’s later painted collages, employed more exotic coloration and explored complex themes. After her husband’s job as a Navy officer moved the family to Florida, first to Pensacola, and later to Tallahassee in 1964, Scanland took a sabbatical from painting for a few years in order to raise her son. She began painting again when her son entered school, and enjoyed sketching and painting the historic areas of Tallahassee. She also reignited her interest in the stage and became active with the Tallahassee Little Theater.Alice Scott Scanland died in Tallahassee at the age of 81. Alice Scott exhibited her paintings, watercolors and sculpture at such institutions as the Pensacola Art Center, Pensacola, Florida, the Gallery of Art, Panama City, Florida, Lemoyne Art Foundation, Tallahassee, Florida, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, Twentieth Century Gallery, Williamsburg, Virginia, Gibbes Art Gallery, Charleston, South Carolina and the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina.

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