Rainy Day in South Carolina; a.k.a. The Shower

Helen Hyde

Helen Hyde traveled to attend an exhibition of her woodcuts in Columbia, South Carolina and then went to Charleston in 1917. She stayed in Belvedere, NC, a suberb of Augusta, Georgia at Chicora Wood, the plantation of Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle, where she did a few etchings and drypoints and her only 3 transfer lithographs, one of which is this swamp image. It was her she met printmaker Alice Huger Smith who did a series of works related to the plantation house.

The plantation house was completed in 1838 by Robert F.W. Allston (the 67th Governor of South Carolina) and his wife Adele Petigru. Their daughter Elizabeth Allston Pringle (1845-1921) continued to plant rice here for 40 years after her father died in 1864. She wrote of life at Chicora Wood in "A Woman Rice Planter" (1913) and "Chronicles of Chicora Wood" (1922). She died here in 1921.

Hyde's images, done at Chicora Wood, were her last prints and included a number of images of African-American children and subjects, such as this dramatic compostion of a walking mother and child, braced against the wind and rain under an umbrella. The moss on the cypress trees in the background sway in the wind. These editions were never completed and are quite rare. Helen Hyde returned to California where she died in 1919.