Mid 20th Century Lowcountry South Carolina Landscape Watercolor Painting by Minnie Mikell, Framed

Description

This exquisite painting is a wonderful opportunity to have a piece of the South Carolina Lowcountry with you year round. … more This exquisite painting is a wonderful opportunity to have a piece of the South Carolina Lowcountry with you year round. This lovely watercolor of the Lowcountry landscape is by famed Charleston Renaissance artist Minnie Mikell. The former Minnie Robertson, born in 1891, was the daughter of Francis M. and Minnie Rogers Robertson, a prominent Charleston family. Minnie’s grandfather, Frances Silas Rogers, amassed his fortune as a cotton merchant after the Civil War. As a result of his great success and as a tribute to his grandchildren, he commissioned the building of the grand mansion at 149 Wentworth Street in 1886. The Wentworth Mansion, a magnificent example of Victorian opulence and splendor, now operates as a bed and breakfast.

Like many young women from prominent Charleston families, Minnie Robertson took a husband, Mr. Alexander B. Mikell, a promising officer in the Marines. While she undertook the duties that befall most wives, Minnie still hungered for more. She became involved in the Junior League, Garden Club, and YWCA. Encouraged by her husband, Minnie found art as an absorbing and provocative avocation for which she had a distinct talent. Minnie studied under the famously talented Alfred Hutty during the 1920’s. “I can draw like a wiz because of Alfred Hutty,” Minnie once remarked.

Minnie Mikell longed to share with the people of Charleston and later, the nation, a variety of her artistic gifts and talents. She started receiving commissions as a portrait artist, capturing on canvas some of Charleston’s best. She experimented with sculptures, etchings, water-colors of magnolias and Lowcountry scenes, and other mediums. The 1920 and 1923 Academy of Music programs, sponsored by the YWCA of Charleston, exhibit some of Minnie’s earliest commercial work in the distinctive style of the day.

Eager for even more contacts with other painters and master teachers, she sought the guidance of such well-known artists as Dong Kingman, Millard Sheets, Edmund Kinzinger, Kovezak Zilkowski and Joseph Pennell. Her investment in further education quickly paid off, for the Carolina Art Association made Minnie an instructor in 1927. She later headed the art department at the Ashley Hall School, for eleven years.

While the rest of the nation experienced the Great Depression, the Mikells enjoyed the fiscal security provided by their backgrounds and Alex’s military career. Minnie traveled freely and exhibited her watercolors in the Morton Gallery on 57th Street, NY. While on a two-month study in Paris, threats of war forced Minnie to return home. She increased her focus on the commercial aspect of her work following WWII. Records confirm Minnie, with her “Alfred Hutty style”, sketched residential and commercial facades, as well as Christmas cards for organizations and private individuals.

Throughout the 1950’s and 60’s, Minnie channeled her passion to painting. Her memoirs document many original entry forms and receipts from this period. The Gibbes Art Gallery Exhibitions and the Carolina Art Association Annual Exhibitions featured many of her works, along with some of her contemporaries like William Halsey, Caroline Whaley, and Anne Richardson.

She won a national design competition at the Art Alliance of America in New York. The painting entitled “No, I won’t” won the first premium in the 1959 South Carolina State Fair in Columbia. In 1967 the Columbus Museum of Arts and Crafts, in Columbus, GA, prominently featured Minnie’s work.

Minnie’s activities, and eventually health, declined after the death of her husband in January 1965. After a long illness Minnie Robertson Mikell died in January of 1987. Though the world will never know another artist with her precise style, her remaining work lives on as an infinite legacy. less less