Darlington Historical Commission Director to Lecture on Famous Southern Portraitist at Florence County Museum
The Florence County Museum is pleased to present a free public lecture on the evening of Thursday January 17. The presentation will be delivered by Brian Gandy, director of the Darlington County Historical Commission, in conjunction with the museum’s current exhibition REVISITED: The Early Portraiture of William Harrison Scarborough.
Using Scarborough’s artworks as a starting point, Gandy’s lecture will connect the social, political, economic, and religious dynamics of Darlington District’s prominent citizens in the 1830s and 1840s. Archival images, maps, documents, and primary source materials contained in the Historical Commission’s collections will accompany the lecture, revealing fresh facts and context for understanding Scarborough’s life and work in the Pee Dee.
“William Harrison Scarborough is primarily known to scholars of Southern art for his later portrait work in Columbia, SC. Much less attention has been given to his Darlington period portraits,” said museum curator, Stephen W. Motte.
Scarborough, originally from Tennessee, is known to have painted over 600 portraits in the state between 1835 and his death in 1871. Twenty five percent of those portraits were painted in the Pee Dee.
“Scarborough almost monopolized the Antebellum portrait market in South Carolina,” Motte added. “He lived and worked in the Darlington area for thirteen years. He raised his family there. His later successes were built on the reputation earned by the quality and quantity of his early work. His life as a student of painting began in Tennessee and Ohio, but his professional career as an artist begins here in Darlington.”
REVISITED features 20 portraits in oil, three works on paper, and one rare miniature portrait on ivory. It is the first exhibition of Scarborough’s paintings since 1969, and the only one ever to focus on his early South Carolina work. It will remain on exhibit at the Florence County Museum until February 24, 2019.
The lecture and reception will begin at 6:30 pm Thursday, January 17.
For more information about the lecture, the exhibition, or any of the museum’s public programs, please contact the Florence County Museum at 843.676.1200, or visit www.flocomuseum.org
