Three Shack Landscape
Date1947
MediumOil on board
DimensionsBoard: 18 × 24 inches (45.7 × 61 cm)
Framed: 23 7/8 × 29 7/8 × 2 inches (60.6 × 75.9 × 5.1 cm)
Credit LineGift of Walter and Linda Evans
Object number2023.33
Copyright© 2024 Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, NY.
The images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextHughie Lee-Smith is best known for his sparsely populated cityscapes and coastline scenes, images of isolation and exclusion that demonstrate influence from Surrealism. Born in Eustis, Florida, he lived in Atlanta as a youth, then Ohio, where he graduated from the Cleveland School of Art in 1938. After a World War II stint in the Navy stationed on the Great Lakes, he briefly taught art in South Carolina before settling in Detroit, where economic opportunities for African Americans were more abundant. Lakeshore scenery inspired enigmatic images like this work, in which three shacks—one dark brown, one red, and one green—are arranged along a rocky beach beneath ominous blue and gray clouds. A dramatic patch of light illuminates the surrounding dunes and rocks, while a single pole dangling a twisted wire juts skyward in the foreground. After more than a decade in Detroit, Lee-Smith moved to New York City in 1958 and taught at the Art Students League. In 1967, he became the second Black artist elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design (after Henry Ossawa Tanner, whose work hangs nearby in the Rotunda).
