Charleston, SC, where the Ashley and Cooper rivers famously meet to form the Atlantic Ocean, was once one of the richest cities in North America, rivaling Philadelphia and Boston for its refinement and culture. Unfortunately, the American Civil War left Charleston and the rest of South Carolina in economic straits. The saying was that Charlestonians were "too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash". Fortunately for their latter descendants, they were also too poor to tear down much of anything. The charm of Charleston's colonial architecture remains  today in large part because of early preservation efforts, but also because so few residents could afford to replace it at the close of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th.

In the period betwen the two world wars, Charleston experienced a rebirth, exemplified in both the literary arts (DuBose Heyward, Josephine Pinckney, John Bennet, among others) and in the visual arts.  Many of the artists were from South Carolina, such as Anna Heyward Taylor,  Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, and Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, while others became "adopted Charlestonians" such as Alfred Hutty and Emmett Robinson.  Some merely visited Charleston, like George Biddle and Edward Hopper, but they produced work influenced by their time in the lowcountry.

While these artists worked in various media, several of them found printmaking and (drypoint) etching to be ideally suited to the picturesque charm of Charleston. Elizabeth Verner is said to have intentionally kept the scale of her work small so that it could travel in a suitcase with the buyer from out of town.  Aside from portability, the chief advantage to today's collector is that these works on paper remain more or less affordable.

Having said that, I must warn you that even at eBay bargain prices, some signed etchings by Verner and Hutty bring the kind of prices one might associate with transportation, instead of artworks. But  an etching is easier to maintain than a car, so the cost over time may be seen as  more manageable. And some items sell for under a hundred dollars.

Do be sure exactly what you are buying. Verner and Smith works have been reproduced in many ways and are sometimes sold in the form of open-edition prints, postcards, and even pages from books. If you simply want the attractive image, this is fine, but one would do well to learn the going rate and bid accordingly. Similarly, Hutty's work has been collected in books, including a volume in the "American Etchers" series that contained reproductions.  They are clearly marked as such, but the markings can be obscured in a frame.

Subject matter ranges from gritty urban (well, Urban Charleston) scenes to the pastoral. Figures are sometimes absent, sometimes slightly abstract, but frequently identifiable as individuals instead of mere types.  Cobblestone streets and brickwork are rendered with intricacy and precision by Hutty and Verner, while Alice Ravenel Huger Smith depicts dreamy swamps, with light and shadow mingling to nearly obscure a lone bird. Anna Heyward Taylor's prints are coarser, but no less precious, evoking Japanese prints in composition and  form. The overall impression is a mirror of Charleston, at once sophisticated, classical, and distinctly regional

The breadth of the Charleston Renaissance and its continuing influence on the 21st Century South can't adequately be treated in the space of this brief article, but  it is the hope of this writer that your interest will be piqued and that you will go on to enjoy these great southern artworks, perhaps, even to collect them.