One of the leading artists of the Charleston, South Carolina Renaissance, 1915 to 1940, Alice Smith was known for her landscape and genre paintings. She was a descendent of several distinguished families. She was largely self taught and had neither enough money nor inclination to go to school. She learned by observing prints of the Japanese ukiyo-e-school, and did numerous woodblock prints using the same principles including the reflection of reverence for nature in her subject matter.

New York artist Lovell Birge Harrison was her only real mentor, and their friendship began in 1908, when he and his wife first stayed in Charleston. They lodged at an inn where there was no studio space, and the frien...