Alfred Heber Hutty, "An Avenue of Oaks"

ALFRED HEBER HUTTY
1877(8)-1954(8)

An Avenue of Oaks
Etching, 20th Century

Alfred Hutty was born and educated in Michigan, but he spent his adult life going between Woodstock, NY and Charleston, S.C. He moved to New York to work as a stained glass window designer for Tiffany Glass studios. He studied painting at the Art Students League with L. Birge Harrison (represented in our Wiegand collection), and soon became deeply involved with the Woodstock art colony. He and his wife moved to Charleston in 1919, and it was there that he became enthralled with etching. He set up a print studio there and went on to win nationwide awards for his etching. He was the first American to be elected to the British Society of Graphic Arts, and was a founding member of the Charleston Etchers Club. In Art and Artists of the South Boyd Sanders wrote “Hutty adapted readily to his new mode of expression...the rapid certainty of his bitten lines and the rich bloom and shimmer of his drypoints authoritatively declare his mastery of the medium.” He continued to work in oils and mural painting in addition to his etchings. Hutty returned to his home in Woodstock every summer until his death in the 1950s.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham