Southern Pines (Alabama Pines)
Anne Goldthwaite, American, 1869 - 1944
about 1915
Etching on laid paper
Impression: 6 × 7 in. (15.2 × 17.8 cm)
Sheet: 8 3/4 × 12 1/2 in. (22.2 × 31.8 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Mrs. Hersey Egginton in memory of her son, Everett Egginton, Class of 1921
PR.954.20.154
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Research Area
Not on view
Inscriptions
Signed, in graphite, lower right: Anne Goldthwaite Watermark: VAN GELDER ZONEN
Label
This image of the iconic Southern pine captures more than the foliage of the Southeast. The pines, a familiar image for residents of the rural Southeast, grow quickly in abandoned farm fields where the soil has been stripped of all nutrients due to unsustainable farm practices. These trees represent not only the environmental toll of conventional farming but also the loss of old-growth forests and the ravaging of land once inhabited by Native Americans. Anne Goldwaite takes what could be a pleasant nature scene and uses a sepia color palette, the spindly thinness of the trunks, and the disorder of the foliage on the right to create a sense of precarity and unease. In what would otherwise be an idyllic image, Goldwaite creates a sense of the uncanny.
Goldthwaite was seemingly bound for traditional white upper-class Southern life until her husband-to-be was killed in a duel. The Alabama native left for New York City, where she emerged as a leading painter of the South, known for her depictions of rural scenes and the daily lives of African Americans. She was an active leader in the suffrage movement and advocated for minority groups in the South.
From the 2022 exhibition A Space for Dialogue 104, Southern Gothic, curated by Abigail Smith '23, Conroy Intern
Exhibition History
A Space for Dialogue 104, Southern Gothic, Abigail Smith, Class of 2023, Conroy Intern, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 8–February 27, 2022.
Provenance
Collected by Hersey Egginton (1875-1951); bequeathed to his wife, Mary E. (Benner) Egginton (1875-1962), Garden City, New York, 1951; given to present collection, 1954.
Catalogue Raisonne
A.D. Breeskin, Anne Goldthwaite: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Graphic Work, Montgomery, 1982, no. 117.
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