Samuel D. Bissette "Dismal Swamp Canal at South Mills" Signed Numbered 874/1000

Description: Limited Edition number 874 of 1,000 copies. Signed and numbered. Print and glass in great condition. Frame has some handling including chip in upper left corner, and also has paper tears on the back of the frame. See pictures for a better idea of condition. Appears to be the same scene depicted in a black-and-white postcard published by the P.W. Melick Company in 1910. Fame size is approximately 34 1/2" by 26", and the image size is about 24 1/2" by 19 3/4". OCR scan of the information on the back of the frame: Ahistory lesson in watercolor, windows into the past.For Wilmington artist Samuel D. Bissette, thechallenge of "North Carolina Circa 1900"was to create 35 individual paintings, each of whichadded to a broader canvas and formed "a pictureof the state at the turn of the century.""Dismal Swamp Canal at South Mills" is partof the picture, one of those windows into thepast - a watercolor preservation of a time whentwo-masted schooners hauled logs, lumber, cot-ton, tobacco and hogs through the canal fromthe Albemarle Sound to the Chesapeake Bay.Showboats and passenger steamers alsomoved through the locks of the canal in theearly 1900s. It was one of North Carolina's pio-neer engineering achievements, a bold step ininterstate commerce.But today the canal, first surveyed by GeorgeWashington and others in 1763, is often closed bylow water levels. Only pleasure boaters use the canalnow, and federal funds for the nation's oldest operationalcanal appear to be running out. Its time, say even the canal'sstaunchest supporters, may have passed.In the transparent watercolors of Bissette, the Dismal Swamp Canal, seenas it was in the early 1900s, remains a testament to a nation and state firstflexing its muscles with ambitious public works projects. It is a monumentto the energies of shovel- and pick-wielding young men who first carved a22-mile shipping line through snake-infested mire and nearly impenetrabletimber thickets.Working from a yellowed photograph of the canal at South Mills, Bissettehas captured the panorama of turn-of-the-century coastal shipping in thestate. Flatboats, which first traveled the canal hauling shingles and barrelstaves in the 1800s, and the single- and double-masted schooners line thecanal to the horizon, their hulls mirror-imaged in the silent water.The painting, Bissette says, was the most difficult in the collection toexecute. Demanding in its attention to detail, or rather in its suggestionof detail, the painting is an example of the maturing art of Bissette, whoonly 16 years ago took up painting as a second career.A banker until he retired as president of Wilmington's Peoples Savingsand Loan Association in 1977, Bissette had always been able to draw andhad talked about painting, but it wasn't until his wife and daughter presentedhim with an oil-paint set for Christmas in 1969 that hbegan to give serious expression to his artistic interestsHe soon enrolled in an evening drawing class at thUniversity of North Carolina at Wilmington anhis second career was started. Over the next threyears, he studied under North Carolina artisEdward Voorhees of Morehead City and thersought the instruction of the late John Pikenoted watercolorist and illustrator of Wood-stock, N.Y.In 1974 he had his first individual showat St. John's Art Gallery in Wilmington, andthe next year one of his paintings won firstplace in the competition of the North CarolinaWatercolor Society.He continued painting about three nights aweek and on weekends, and by the time he retiredfrom his first career in 1977, his art was in widedemand. His work has been distributed in more than 40states in the U.S. and abroad in private, public and cor-porate collections, and he has been listed in Who's Whoin American Art since 1981.In 1976 he was commissioned by Wachovia Bank and Trustto prepare a "Portrait of North Carolina," a 40-watercolor collection nowon permanent display at the bank in Winston-Salem. For the commissionhe traveled the mountains, foothills and coastland searching out scenes thatwould be uniquely representative of the state's visual beauty and diversity.The collection, which includes depictions of several state historical land-marks, was exhibited in 24 cities in North Carolina and the FDIC Galleryin Washington, D.C.Bissette's special interest in "painting history" gained momentum as aresult of his work on the "Portrait of North Carolina" series, and "NorthCarolina Circa 1900" became a further expression of that interest.The result of three years of examining hundreds of yellowed pictures, dog-eared photos, museum artifacts and descriptions, the collection came to be,Bissette says, a "window into the past, accenting subtly or openly a particularfacet of our culture of that era.""Dismal Swamp Canal at South Mills" was one of those facets of NorthCarolina culture - reflecting, Bissette says, "how we as a state were emerg-ing, not just geographically, but socially and economically as well" in NorthCarolina, circa 1900.

Price: 50 USD

Location: Auburn, Washington

End Time: 2024-12-23T04:07:19.000Z

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