Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection

Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection features over forty paintings by native Southerners and painters who travelled to the Southern states between the 1880s and the 1940s. These stunning artworks reflect a moment in American art when a strong interest in Impressionism reinvigorated how artists viewed their environment. Expansive landscapes and tender genre scenes became bathed in light. With a loose, painterly style, the artists of Scenic Impressions used warm colors and a fluidity of form to signal their desire to capture atmospheric transience or a “scenic impression.” They strived to evoke an experience, not to simply transcribe the natural world, and produced artworks unparalleled within the history of Southern painting.

Image: Anthony Johannes Thieme (1888-1954), Entrance to Magnolia Gardens in Spring, Charleston, SC, undated, oil on canvas, The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina