Lucas Johnson Landscape Prints

An enchanting Southern landscape by the mother of the Charleston Renaissance. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, and educated under the tutelage of Thomas Anshutz at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, O'Neill Verner was a teacher, a mother, an artist, an ardent preservationist, and a skilled autodidact. Having previously focused on painting, in the early 1920s she found herself deeply moved by printmaking as a media, and especially so by the simple, peaceful themes and tableaus she discovered in Japanese art. She embarked on a effort to teach herself Japanese printmaking techniques, and in the process, produced the charming images of every day life in Charleston and its environs that earned her recognition as a cultural icon in her day, and in more modern times, as the mother of the Charleston Renaissance, which flourished well into the 1930s. In 1923 she opened a studio in Charleston where she focused on documenting the local color and the architecture and landscape that distinguishes Charleston as one of the South's most beautiful cities, all the while applying the gentle and poetic thematic sensibilities of Japanese printmaking. O'Neill Verner soon found herself in high demand when municipalities and institutions throughout the country sought commissions from her to document the beauty of their grounds and historic buildings. She worked as far north as the campuses of Harvard and Princeton, and extensively across the South, including in Savannah, Georgia, where through sweeping commissions she was able to marry her love of southern preservation and art. O'Neill Verner was a lifelong learner, and continued a path of edification that led her to study etching at the Central School of Art in London, to travel extensively through Europe, and to visit Japan in 1937, where she studied sumi (brush and ink) painting. She was a founding member of the Charleston Etchers Club, and the Southern States Art League. Her works are represented in the permanent collections of leading museums across the American south, and in major national institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston's Museum of Fine Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. O'Neil Verner...

A superb, dark impression of a well known scene by Arms. Etching with aquatint on watermarked handmade F.J. Head & Co. laid paper, 12 3/8 x 13 15/16 inches (315 x 354 mm), full marg...

Etching and aquatint on antique laid paper, wide margins. Signed, dated and inscribed "Edition of 100" in pencil, lower margin. Second state (of 2)....

Etching on antique cream laid paper with a partial watermark (likely Arches), 12 1/8 x 6 1/8 inches (308 x 156 mm), full margins. Signed and dated in pencil in the lower right margin...

Etching and drypoint on greenish cream wove paper, 3 1/4 x 1 15/16 inches (81 x 48 mm), full margins. Signed, dated, and inscribed "III" in pencil. Number 46 from the French Churche...

Ecthing in black ink on cream laid paper with a partial watermark, full margins. In excellent condition. A very scarce work from an edition of less than 20 impressions. Signed, date...

Etching and aquatint on hand made F.J. Head & Co watermarked cream laid paper, full margins. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right margin. From the edition of 160 (from a total of ...

Etching on cream laid paper, 1930. 7 1/2 x 3 7/8 inches (190 x 970 mm), full margins. Signed and inscribed "Edition 100" in pencil, lower margin. In very good condition with minor s...

New York, circa 1940 Etching with aquatint in colors on cream laid paper with a partial watermark and a deckle edge, 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches (297 x 208 mm), full margins. Minor mat to...

Etching on Japon paper, 3 1/2 x 1 3/4 inches (89 x 44 mm), full margins. Signed in pencil and inscribed "III" in the lower margin. Likely an unrecorded trial proof impression from th...

Etching on cream laid paper with an unknown watermark with an AL inside a ribbon. 10 1/4 x 7 7/8 inches (258 x 187 mm), full margins. Signed, titled, and dated in pencil lower margin. In good condition with one small, very minor 1/4- inch horizontal tear in lower-center quadrant of the image area, in the area of the doorway beneath the arch, very difficult to discern, and completely unobtrusive. 1/2-inch minor horizontal edge tear center sheet edge, bottom margin (outside of image area). Paper tape from a previous hinge at top right and left sheet edges. Light scattered age tone and surface soiling. __________ Perhaps now most famous for one particular illustration for an edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Sullivan's etching of a skeleton crowned in roses was appropriated by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley...

Etching with aquatint printed in brownish black ink on watermarked BFK Rives cream wove paper, 9 1/2 x 7 11/16 inches (240 x 193 mm), full margins. Signed in pencil and numbered 79/...