Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/320

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which followed war and reconstruction have disappeared. The enthusiastic reception and rapid sale of the recently published memorial edition of Timrod's poems is a hopeful sign of reawakened interest in the sweetest love poems and most stirring martial lyrics ever penned by a Southern poet.

No great artist first saw the light in Charleston, but the city boasts of several of more than mediocre ability. Early in the eighteenth century Henrietta Johnson executed a number of crayon portraits which are still treasured by some of the old families. Portrait painting was indeed almost the only branch of art encouraged for over one hundred years, the local portrait painter Theus having opened his studio in Charleston in 1750, and done much excellent work, some of which is still extant. But if there were no great painters at home, the wealthy Charlestonians brought back art treasures from Europe, and some of their stately homes were beautified by works of Allan Ramsay, Zoffany, Romney, Gainsborough, West, Copley and Gilbert Stuart.


"The pride though of the art lovers of Charleston," says Dr. G. E. Manigault, "in the closing years of the last century as well as the early years of this, was in the