Preface

At the age of nineteen, on the occasion of her first exhibition, Mary Whyte told a reporter, “Everybody needs people.” Whyte herself is a people person, gracious with individuals from all walks of life and patient as she listens to their stories. It has been my pleasure to get to know Mary and her work and to learn about “her people,” through her paintings and writings mostly, but also through interviews. As an art historian, I have attempted to put her work in context; it comes very naturally to me to compare her work with that of Claude Monet, Rembrandt van Rijn, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. I have chosen to illustrate a number of paintings by the artists that she admires most—Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Andrew Wyeth. They have served her well as artistic mentors, both technically and thematically. I have also selected the work of her Charleston predecessors, two women who loved their native city and helped to shape its future: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith and Elizabeth O'Neill Verner. In many respects Mary Whyte follows in their footsteps.

Without the filter of history, it is more difficult to assess Whyte vis à vis her contemporaries. Certainly she is a traditionalist, preferring a representational style at odds with the abstract and conceptual art one finds in New York galleries. Two artists who depict the South, however, do come readily to mind. Jonathan Green captures his own Gullah heritage in brilliantly colored compositions dominated by geometric, flat shapes. Dark-skinned faceless women and children play and work under bright blue skies in visually active scenes. In contrast the mood of Stephen Scott Young's paintings is more contemplative. Like Whyte he is a masterful technician, especially in watercolor, and he too greatly admires Homer and Wyeth. Unlike Whyte, however, Young maintains an emotional distance from his young sitters.

This volume is the story of Mary Whyte: her life, her art, and her passions. I am grateful to her for her openness and her willingness to answer myriad questions. Others have been exceptionally helpful as well, including both our husbands, Smith Coleman and Kenneth Severens. In addition the staff of Coleman Fine Art—Katie Lindler, Elizabeth Collins, Marilynn McMillan, and Croft Lane—has handled innumerable details gracefully and deserve special acknowledgement. I am grateful to Smith Coleman and Jack Alterman for their excellent photography and to members of the University of South Carolina Press, especially Jonathan Haupt, Linda Haines Fogle, Bill Adams, and Pat Callahan, who have so ably shepherded the project. For various and sundry other help, I also thank Joyce Baker, Jane Bechdolt, Doug and Billie Hogg, Virginia Holbrook, Leonard J. Long, Angela Mack, Tesha Marsland, Mary McCarthy, Layton McCurdy, Constance McGeorge, Joseph P. Riley, Jr., Burton Silverman, and Renata Toney.

Raider, 2012
Watercolor on paper, 28 ½ × 27 ¼ inches
Private collection